


Born in Fiendfyre

by samhaine



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 188,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25938706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samhaine/pseuds/samhaine
Summary: Rather than going to a farm in the Ozarks, teen Harry Dresden, suffering under the Doom of Damocles, winds up attending Hogwarts. (Harry Dresden as protagonist, but Dresden Files history and magic altered to fit into the Potterverse)
Relationships: Harry Dresden/Mathilda Grimblehawk, Penelope Clearwater/Percy Weasley
Comments: 61
Kudos: 76





	1. Stone Faced 1: Jail Bird

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory disclaimer: All the characters, world building, and story beats here that don't belong to JK Rowling belong to Jim Butcher (or their associated media empires).

##  Guest of the State

The nightmare began to repeat again. I'd lost track of how many times it had played already. I was bound in a ritual circle, the first girl I'd ever loved barely looking at me as she painted runes on my skin. Not far away but out of the circle, my mentor, a man I didn't exactly like but had thought I could trust, was preparing for whatever they were about to do to me.

In the memory, or whatever this nightmare was, the walls of our rented house in the London suburbs faded away into smoke and darkness. All I could focus on was whatever they were trying to do to me, and the rest of the world was darkness. All I could feel was cold. As the old man who'd rescued me from the orphanage and taught me magic began to chant, something began to pull away from the background. Made of the same black smoke, it gradually took on the vague form of a person.

"I have prepared the vessel as promised. Claim him!" Justin shouted, as the wraith began to move toward me and the runes blazed. Pain seared through me, and the walls of my mind started to crumble. I shouted for Elaine to help, but she had retreated to the back of the room, her glassy stare on the floor. The creature reached out its arm and touched me, causing me torment I'd never felt before. It was up to me. Bound and without a focus, the trick my godmother had taught me was extremely risky, but not as risky as whatever this specter wanted to do to me.

With a painful twist and a thunderous clap I was across the room, hands free and grabbing for my blasting rod, discarded by Justin in the corner by my clothes. My blood was now freely mixing into the runes, random strips of flesh splinched off and drifting to the floor back in the circle along with the ropes that held me. It hurt, but not as much as Justin and Elaine immediately trying to react. To bind me back into the circle for this creature.

I dove behind the couch that had been shoved away to turn the sitting room into a ritual space. In the nightmare, pieces of the room were materializing from the shadows as they became relevant. I hit the floor hard, dust burning into my wounds but narrowly dodging the red light of stunners flying toward me. I didn't know how I was going to fight both of them and this spirit. I'd never even beaten Justin dueling by himself.

My only hope, I thought, was to try to apparate again, even though going ten feet hadn't worked out so well, and my blasting rod wouldn't help. Out of the house and I'd have a chance. But then the wraith floated above the couch, soaking up all thought and light in the room as it sought to finish whatever it had started. The very wrongness of it woke a powerful anger in me, and I could only think back to the  _ other  _ spell my godmother had so recently taught me, which the rod was basically  _ designed _ for.

"Incendio! Pyroincendio!" I screamed, and willed my fear and betrayal into the charm, transforming it into a powerful curse. The purple jet of flame barely shed any light, reserving all of its power for scorching heat. When it had happened, it was the hottest thing I'd ever felt, but in this nightmare-memory it barely registered against the cold. I caught the wraith with the blast, and it flung itself away with a shriek, fleeing the room with a hole torn in its nebulous form. I tried to end the spell, but it had taken on a life of its own, flame still shooting from my focus, even when I dropped the blasting rod. I had no idea where it was still getting its power, but the borders of the room were going from nebulous void to intense, colorful flames.

As I peeked over the couch, I was shocked by what the flames had become. Coalesced into a beast of near-ultraviolet fire, it had already torn into Justin. I didn't even know if he'd had long enough to realize what was happening. His smoking corpse had fallen not far from where he'd attacked me. I couldn't see Elaine through the smoke and flame. I was about to charge into the burning house looking for her when something changed.

The burning house slowly faded into a stone cell, and the numbing cold became simply the clammy chill of a damp prison room. As I came out of my fugue, or dream, or whatever it was, I thought I saw the wraith that attacked me retreat down the hall as a big-eared cat made of silver light stalked past the door. As the lambent glow hit me, I was beginning to come out of whatever terrible fugue I'd been in.

"Did you even interrogate the boy before you brought him here?" a deep voice asked.

A raspier voice answered, "Interrogations always go easier after they know what they're in for." I couldn't see the speaker, but I was sure he was smirking. "Besides, he's an auror-killer. Trial's just a formality at this point."

"A formality we must uphold," answered the first voice, who I could now see was a dark-skinned man in robes styled to look like some kind of African formal costume. He gestured at the door while keeping his wand pointed down the hall controlling the silver lynx.  _ Patronus _ my memory finally supplied: the spell used to ward off creatures of darkness. I wonder if that would have been a better choice for me than fiendfyre.

The other man slouched over and grudgingly unlocked the cell door with his wand. Between the ratty tan trenchcoat and the graying blonde hair, he looked like a guy that had read a Hellblazer comic and decided that was exactly the vibe he wanted to put out. Hell, he looked old enough that maybe Constantine's dress code was based on this guy by an incompletely memory-wiped comic artist. "C'mon, punk. Time for your interview."

I thought about being petulant and making them drag me out, but I needed the time away from whatever nightmare-inducing creature that was, and could barely put together a coherent thought of resistance. When we came to London, Justin had warned me the British prison system was harsh, but this just seemed wrong. I grudgingly levered myself standing, and had a bit of schadenfreude as the men did a double-take when they realized I towered over them. I'm not exactly physically overwhelming, especially given how I'm thin enough to read as all elbows and knees, but the only guys taller than me tend to have a giant in their family trees.

As I followed them out the narrow corridor, the rows of cells lit only by the light from the patronus, I couldn't see anyone else in the nearby cells, but I could hear screams of anguish and terror somewhere below me. We finally left through another gate at the end of the hall where some candles were burning. As the gate was closed on the room, I saw that the sign above said, "Wing 1: Minimum Security."

The wannabe-Constantine caught my glance and smirked, "That's right. You only got a  _ taste _ . Once the Wizengamot nails you for killing Du Morne, you're going down into maximum security with the Death Eaters." Of the three proper nouns in that sentence, the only one I recognized was Du Morne.

It was Justin's last name, and meant I was probably screwed.

##  Good Cop/Bad Cop

"My name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden. Conjure by it at your own risk."

Admittedly, when I practiced that in the mirror I was full of confidence and staring down an imagined bad guy, not still out of it in a candle-lit interrogation room in some drafty old castle and sitting across an antique table from a couple of aurors. The trenchcoat-wearing hardass seemed amused rather than intimidated. The black guy actually blinked for a second and tilted his head, like he'd heard my name before.

"Why'd I want to conjure by your name? One of you is too many as it is," my interrogator quipped as he slouched deeper into his coat.

"He's obviously too deep into dementor-exposure to be coherent, Dawlish," the other one explained, then got up to head out of the room. "I'll be right back."

Clearly pleased that his partner had left the room, Dawlish took the opportunity for another pass at breaking me. "You're a cop-killer, Dresden. Du Morne taught me. Taught a lot of the aurors at the academy. Lot of aurors ready to see some payback for burning the man alive. American out of your depth in London? Hoped to find something in the house to steal?"

I tried to chuckle sardonically, but whatever those cells had done to me turned it into a cough. I managed to get out, "Was shield practice for you baseballs? Or are those just easier to come by in the states?"

That hit home and Dawlish shrugged, "Bludgers." Justin had apparently been a violent teacher with his earlier apprentices too. He insisted that any idiot could make a shield that would stop a spell, but most wizards never learned to protect against bullets or other flung missiles. The aging auror was looking at me differently, now. "You claiming you were his apprentice?"

"Something like that," I shrugged. I was going to elaborate, but the gesture made me wince. I looked down at my arm, pulling up the prison jumpsuit they'd given me. My splinching wounds were scabbed over, but far from healed. At least I hadn't bled to death.

"Only the highest-quality dittany salve for the minister's special guests," Dawlish sad, the sarcasm dripping. "That's how we found you, you know? Barely took a tracking spell to follow the amount of blood you were losing. How'd you splinch yourself anyway?"

I winced. Hopefully they hadn't followed my  _ whole  _ trip after leaving the burning house behind. I'd stashed some rescued items I hoped to retrieve if I got out of this. I didn't exactly get the impression he'd believe me, but no reason not to share. "Apparating out of the ritual circle I was stuck in."

The other auror had walked back in on that, bringing a half-eaten candy bar that he handed to me as he sat back down. "Eat that," he suggested, "it will help."

While I was suspicious, I also suddenly realized I was starving. How long had I been here? The chocolate wasn't exactly a meal, but I  _ did  _ feel a lot better as soon as I started eating it. A gray fog I'd been feeling around my senses and emotions started to dissipate.

"You get that last bit, Shacklebolt?" his partner asked.

Shacklebolt nodded, "A shame the fiendfyre destroyed any proof one way or the other. But let's play this out. Start at the beginning, please, Mr. Dresden."

If it had just been that guy, I might have. But I was alone in a foreign country, my mentor had tried to use me as a sacrifice in some dark arts ritual, my girlfriend had helped, and Dawlish was at best as misguided as I'd been. At worst, he knew my former mentor was dark and was trying to cover it up. The chocolate had at least cleared my head enough to start asking the real questions. "I'd love to, but do I get a lawyer or a phone call in this country?" Not that I had anyone to call...

Dawlish looked over at Shacklebolt and asked, "Why do the American mudbloods always ask for a phone?"

The black auror didn't particularly seem to like the insult, which Justin had warned me was a slur about blood purity that many British wizards used. "It's a cliche in muggle films," he allowed, then turned to me to explain, "We must inform your barrister if you have one on retainer. And you will have additional opportunities to contact one before a trial. But, as Auror Dawlish has made clear, we can hold you for quite some time when you are the primary suspect in a murder investigation before bringing it to trial. If you have a compelling story, it's often a good idea to just tell us what happened. We may be able to use your testimony to identify a better suspect. Right now, you're our only known witness to what happened last night."

I hadn't found Elaine in the house. She'd tied me up and helped with the ritual. She'd betrayed me even more fully than Justin, because I thought she loved me. It would be so easy to just blame her for everything. See if they could find her. But, for all I knew she was dead. Even if she was, I couldn't bring myself to claim she was the mastermind and Justin was a victim. I still felt I owed her that, for some reason. So I started talking, figuring out how much I was going to say as I went…

"Not that it matters, but I'm not a mudblood," I began, fixing my gaze on Dawlish. "My mother was magical and probably British. I  _ thought  _ we had moved to London to try to learn more about her. She died when I was born. My father died when I was little. Justin found me in an orphanage before I turned 11. Told me I was a wizard."

Something about the age captured Shacklebolt's attention. "An American, muggle orphanage?" I nodded and he asked, "Why there? And how did Du Morne find you?"

"Dad traveled for work. He was a muggle magician. They do tricks for entertainment. I'm not sure where he met mom. I don't know how Justin found me. He led me to believe that it was normal for wizards to find kids strong in magic and take them on as apprentices. Is that wrong?"

"This is such bollocks," Dawlish insisted, interrupting his partner trying to answer. "Justin Du Morne was a decorated auror and academy instructor who retired after the war with nearly half a century of service. Why would he be trawling MACUSA territory for apprentices?"

Shacklebolt thought for a moment then asked me, "When and how did you get into Britain, Mr. Dresden?"

It was easy enough to dredge up the date, since I'd made a joke about bewaring the Ides of March when we came over. "March 15th this year. International portkey from Chicago to London. Some of our furniture and clothes got shipped the muggle way to the house."

"And we'll find that you and Du Morne traveled together?" Me, Justin, and Elaine, but I didn't need to volunteer that. As I nodded again, Shacklebolt continued, "Then we'll confirm the passports and travel with the Ministry tomorrow. But, for now, can we take for granted that, whatever the reason, Mr. Dresden  _ was  _ Du Morne's apprentice?" Now it was Dawlish's turn to nod, grudgingly. "Please continue, Mr. Dresden."

While I was vaguely aware that I was experiencing the good cop/bad cop gambit, it was a classic for a reason, because it worked. "He trained me for a few years. Like I said, we were here as far as I knew to look for information about my mother. We talked about it over Christmas. It was going to be my present. We came over in March, and didn't make any progress for months. I don't know anymore if we were actually here looking for my mother."

"Did you have contact with Du Morne in the last five years or so?" Shacklebolt asked his partner. Dawlish just shook his head, clearly annoyed that my story was holding up so far. "Why don't you think you were looking for your mother?"

I didn't think they wanted to hear that my mad godmother had warned me, and I'd still walked back into the trap like an idiot. Instead, I just offered the far more lame, "He got distant. He'd go talk to people that he didn't want me to meet and wouldn't have any answers. Just said he was working on it. Felt like he was working on something else."

Shacklebolt took that opening, looked at me, raised an eyebrow at Dawlish, and then asked, "Did he ever mention Gringotts?"

Before I could even answer, Dawlish actually sat up from his slouch, now annoyed at his partner. "No! We are not entertaining the idea that my friend and teacher was involved in that. Especially because he was getting murdered by this punk on the same night!"

"By Mr. Dresden… or by co-conspirators who had a falling out after a botched robbery and wanted to hide the evidence?"

"Screw you, Shack! Don't ruin my case in front of the suspect!" Dawlish actually stood up to try to get a height advantage over his partner, his rickety old wooden chair toppling over in his haste. "You can make up all the conspiracy stories you want and sell them to the Quibbler, but I have a dead, decorated auror and an American half-blood with no alibi leaving a blood trail right to his door!"

The black auror didn't lose his cool, just leaned back a bit so he could keep me and Dawlish both in view. "And I have an unprecedented heist on the same night as a violent confrontation using dark magic, only thirty miles away. You know I don't believe in coincidences, John. If your teacher was involved, Mr. Dresden is now our best lead, no matter how much you want to throw him to the dementors because a friend of yours is dead."

I was suddenly wishing I hadn't mentioned the ritual circle. At this point, they were ready to assume Justin had been involved in some kind of conspiracy that got him killed. Maybe he had. From what my godmother had told me and what he'd tried, very little would surprise me. I  _ did  _ suddenly remember something from my potions lessons, so before they went after each other again I interjected, "Can't you just put me on veritaserum?"

Shacklebolt gestured at me as if he'd scored a point. Probably guilty people didn't ask to take truth serum. Dawlish grimaced, and asked, "How old are you?"

"I'll be 16 in October," I admitted.

He shook his head, a bit of perverse glee slipping back in. "We can only use it on minors in extreme circumstances. Bad for your magic. We'll have to use other interrogation techniques."

His partner countered, "If it gets him out of Azkaban for murdering an auror, that may be an extreme enough circumstance. And if he's willing to take veritaserum, he's probably willing to submit to mind reading…"

Dawlish shot back, "Even if we had a legilimens here, he'd need a guardian's permission. Since he admits that he's an orphan, and his mentor was just murdered, we don't even know who that is."

Suddenly, from outside the room, there was a sound like a barrel of gasoline igniting and a pressure wave of warm air that shook the decrepit old door and made the candles in the room flicker. Shacklebolt grinned, "Perfect timing. I have a solution to both problems…"

##  On Wings of Flame

Shacklebolt got up to invite in his guest while Dawlish's face went all squinty, as if he suddenly realized he'd been outplayed. I don't know what I was expecting, but what I  _ got  _ was Gandalf, if he'd entered our world through Elton John's closet. I wasn't sure if the powder blue robes stitched with golden and silver stars were his pajamas, since they looked rumpled as if he'd slept in them or put them on quickly to get here in the middle of the night. They were an interesting contrast to the bright red and orange hawk-sized bird sitting on his shoulder.

Shacklebolt gestured to his own recently vacated chair and said, "Chief Warlock, it's a pleasure to see you this evening. We're hoping you can solve an issue. Mr. Dresden here is a suspect in a murder, too young for veritaserum, and it's unclear who his magical guardian is to allow for other methods of interrogation."

The white-bearded old wizard made a negating gesture with his hand about taking Shacklebolt's chair and effortlessly conjured a much nicer, plush chair at the end of the table with a wave of his wand. I noticed that wand was decorated and carved in a way that would be extremely difficult from everything I knew about focus crafting, and looked ancient. The old man quirked an eyebrow as he noticed me examining his wand rather than his conjuration, and quickly hid the wand back up his sleeve in one smooth motion while he was sitting down.

As Shacklebolt reclaimed his seat between his guest and Dawlish, the chief warlock recited, "Mr. H. Dresden. The East Bunk Room. Mercy Home, Chicago, Illinois. I forget the exact street address." He admitted, "It was with great dismay that we did not receive a response to your Hogwarts acceptance letter several years ago, and even greater dismay when we learned that you had been adopted from the home and moved immediately before receiving it. Despite serious efforts to locate you, we could not determine where you'd moved. It's much harder for the locating charms to work in America, of course, but I always suspected something else was at work."

Dawlish wasn't buying it. "Why would an American half-blood get a Hogwarts letter?"

I hated to agree with the Constantine-wannabe, but I added, "Isn't that the dueling school for English purebloods?"

"It's far more than that, Mr. Dresden. And, through your mother's line, you're a legacy student at the top of the list for admittance." As if to head off questions about my mother, he added, "But where are my manners? I'm Albus Dumbledore, and I'm headmaster of Hogwarts, in addition to the Chief Warlock title that Kingsley mentioned." He glanced at Dawlish, "Since you never technically declined your letter due to extenuating circumstances, and you have no other clearly identified magical guardian, I think I can act  _ in loco parentis _ for you sufficiently to approve other methods of interrogation, as Kingsley suggested."

He succeeded in derailing my questions as my admittedly weak command of Latin finally turned up a possible translation of the word Dawlish had used earlier. "Mind collecting?"

Dumbledore sat back in a way that let the candlelight glimmer off his glasses and make his eyes seem to twinkle in approval. "Close, Mr. Dresden. The traditional translation of legilimency is 'mind  _ reading _ ' but there's definitely an element of collecting a subject's thoughts involved. In most cases it is an entirely painless process, where I view your memories in order to establish what happened." He shot a disapproving look at Dawlish. "It is generally a preferred option of establishing innocence to being thrown in with the dementors."

He made a good point. I didn't trust the old man or his too-convenient arrival. I definitely didn't want him digging around my head. But if it was that or going back in a cell… "Do it."

Dawlish still looked like he was trying to come up with a legal objection when Dumbledore told me, "Please bring your memories of the night in question to the front of your mind and look me in the eyes.  _ Legilimens! _ "

Once again the nightmare of the previous evening raced through my head. But it was less like I was stuck experiencing it again and more like I was visualizing it to explain it to someone else. And there were weird tangents. Looking at Justin brought forth short digressions about how I'd met him and my last few years of training. Looking at Elaine started me thinking about her, but it was far too painful and I resisted. Dumbledore probably could have kept going despite my efforts, but I felt him pull back and return to the memory.

When we reached the part where the wraith appeared, I felt a surge of surprise and worry that I didn't think was coming from me. All the memories I had of anything similar, from horror movies to the dementor I'd seen earlier flitted through my mind's eye, and didn't find a match. He let the rest of the memory play out quickly, ending, thankfully, as I raced into the house looking for Elaine.

While I blinked and tried to get my brain back in order after that experience, Dumbledore leaned back in his cushioned chair and steepled his fingers, deep in thought. Dawlish clearly didn't want to give him too much time to think, and asked, "Well?"

With a sigh of annoyance at the interruption, Dumbledore allowed, "Mr. Dresden is not a murderer, John. I know Justin was well-respected amongst many of the aurors that he trained, but I suggest you set aside that preconception and do some digging into his activities of the last few years."

"Was he involved in the other incident last night?" Shacklebolt asked.

"Not that Mr. Dresden could prove, but I suspect if Justin was not involved, he knew people that were…" Dumbledore sighed, "Pulling at that thread may at least turn up some new leads for your investigation."

"If Dresden didn't kill Du Morne, who did?" Dawlish insisted.

"I'm afraid that Justin was engaged in dangerous rituals that led inevitably to his death. While I have some suspicions as to what he hoped to achieve, Mr. Dresden did not know enough about what he saw to provide certainty. I will need to research before I'm comfortable saying more than that."

I was shocked that Dumbledore wasn't revealing that I summoned the fiendfyre that killed Justin and burned down the house. I was hoping for him pointing out it was self defense, but shocked that he was trying to make it sound like I was completely innocent. What was this old man's game? Dawlish apparently agreed, and nearly yelled, "Not good enough, you old meddler! I'm sick of you coming in here and wandering off with clues and suspects. When's the last time you actually  _ helped  _ with an investigation? I can think of half a dozen cases off the top of my head that are still open because you know what's going on but won't tell us." Dumbledore didn't appear to be interested in responding, so Dawlish continued, "Fuck it. I'm invoking the Damocles statute."

Shacklebolt gasped, "John, nobody's called for the Doom of Damocles since Grindelwald's war."

"But it's my prerogative, right?" Dawlish insisted. "Suspect that can't be conclusively exonerated of high crimes, but can't be convicted either. You can't tell me it doesn't fit. I'm invoking it. Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, you are hereby notified that, pursuant to the Damocles statute of the High Crimes Act of 1645, until you are proven innocent of the death of Justin Du Morne, you are under the Doom."

Dumbledore and Shacklebolt looked pissed but weren't elaborating, so I asked, "What does that mean?"

"You mentioned American baseball, right?" Dawlish elaborated with quiet glee. "You've got one strike left. Keep your nose clean, punk.

"The next time you slip up, you're mine."

##  The Morning After

I woke up in a much better situation than the last time I'd come to. It took me a minute to remember why I was in a small castle hospital that would have looked obsolete by 1900. I guessed cleaning magic could account for a lot of problems, but if this was a muggle hospital people would be getting infections constantly. The view was nice, at least, sunlight reflecting off the large lake below indicating that I'd been out for most of the morning, and at it least smelled clean, if not antiseptic.

Dumbledore had calmly put off most of my questions the night before, other than affirming, "Wait, is that a phoenix!?" when the bird in question burst into flame and apparated us from the prison to wherever I was now. I assumed Hogwarts, but so far I'd only seen this hospital room. An elderly matron who seemed to regard herself queen of this domain had briefly conferred with the headmaster, showed me a bed, and made me drink a potion. By the taste and effects, I was guessing a dreamless sleep draught.

"Well good morning, Mr. Dresden," the lady in question called, moving about the room in a manner that the verb bustling had been coined to describe. She'd been across the room, bottles and boxes piled on several chairs outside a large closet, likely in the middle of summer inventory. She wandered over to me and started doing diagnostic spells with her wand while I looked on in bemusement at the school nurse stereotype come to life. "You seem to be recovering, though I insist you take it easy for a few days. I'm afraid to say that you'll likely retain some faint scarring from your improperly treated splinching wounds, but it looks like you've already bounced back from the dementor exposure. How do you feel?"

I checked my forearms and agreed that it was a significant improvement, with the angry scabs I'd had replaced with fading lines. Justin had never been interested in healing charms, not to mention some early problems at the orphanage, so they wouldn't be my first scars. I no longer felt the haze of depression and fear that lingered throughout the prison, so I guessed whatever those creatures had done to me was passing, as well. "Much better, thank you ma'am."

"Excellent. I'll inform the headmaster that you're up and around. Please stay in bed until someone comes to collect you." With that, she went back to what she was doing and left me to reflect on the chaos of the last few days while looking out over the lake.

I was now wearing a cotton hospital gown instead of prison robes, though I could faintly feel magic running through them as if they'd been transfigured from what I was wearing when I walked in. Curious and with nothing better to do, I gathered my magic for a few minutes and then muttered, " _ Finite _ ." The surge of cancellation snapped through my clothing and in a moment I was back in the t-shirt and shorts I'd managed to salvage from the fire and collected before leaving the prison. The transfiguration had at least worked out most of the smoke smell, but the shirt was still emblazoned with a now-completely-inappropriate logo for Baderbräu. Well, maybe not completely: Dumbledore had been amused that the beer's logo looked like a phoenix.

Of course, I was never that precise without a focus, and the counter-spell also caught the bed I was laying in. I noticed too late that the rest of the beds in the ward would only be roomy for small children as my legs were suddenly sticking off the end of the cot. I grumbled and pulled them Indian-style so I could barely fit on the bed that had clearly been lengthened to fit me.

"Five points to… well, we don't know what house you are yet," said the woman that had just walked in. Or, that was what I thought she'd said, through her thick Scottish accent. I glanced over and was impressed. This lady could rule the Chicago goth scene by just walking into a club. Given how long witches and wizards lived, the combination of barely-graying dark hair and fine wrinkles could put her at anywhere from 50 to 100. Severely dressed in all black with a witch's hat, perhaps her lack of wrinkles was due to never smiling. Though I thought I spotted a number of emotions flickering around her eyes as she looked at me.

"Five points?" I asked, confused.

"Our scoring system for student achievements," she explained. "Once one gets into the habit, it becomes a reflex. That's the first wandless counter-spell I've seen from a student in some time."

I shrugged, "I was never very good with a wand as a focus. I'm much better with the right tool than a Swiss Army knife. Since you can't always get the right focus, I learned to do most charms without one if I need to."

Her mouth puckered a bit, and I wasn't sure if she was upset or impressed. "Well, that may make it harder to teach you, here. We haven't taught anything but wand magic for decades. I wasn't sure there were any serious practitioners of other styles still in the Western world. This certainly makes your placement tests much more important."

I felt like I needed to throw the brakes on this whole educational train before it got too much momentum. "Ma'am, I really appreciate the headmaster sticking his neck out for me to keep me from being railroaded by the aurors. But I'd barely  _ heard  _ of Hogwarts before last night, and I certainly can't pay for a fancy Scottish boarding school for purebloods. I was honestly hoping that the US embassy would ship me back home to Chicago so I could get a job and try to pick up my GED."

She cocked her head like a confused animal, then admitted, "I'm not exactly sure what a GED is, Mr. Dresden, but there are difficulties with your plan. Mainly, that it won't be permitted for you to leave the country until we can convince the Ministry to lift the Doom of Damocles. While using muggle means might succeed, the aurors  _ do  _ keep an eye on flight and ship manifests, so it's far from guaranteed. However, I can assure you that this is not simply a school for the pureblooded elite, no matter how much they'd like others to think so. We have many students here on scholarship, including quite a few muggleborn. The headmaster has assured me that arranging your tuition will be a priority, as long as you're willing to put in the work."

I made a guess. "My mother went here?"

A flicker of pain, quickly concealed. None of the adults here seemed to want to be completely honest with me. "She did. Several of her own ancestors did so as well. Margaret was… a willful girl, and left here early and not on the best of terms. Like her son, she was eager to make her own way, perhaps to her own detriment. I simply ask that you give me an opportunity to prove to you that it's worth your time. Her life might have gone much differently, had she stayed at Hogwarts."

I wasn't even trying to be horrible, it just slipped out. "She wouldn't have married a muggle, died in childbirth, and lost her son in the American orphanage system, you mean?" I apparently wasn't ready to hear my mother, who my father had always told me was the most wonderful woman in the world, described as basically a delinquent high school dropout.

The woman's face went even more still than before, as if it was taking all of her skill at being a taciturn school marm from reacting. But I thought I saw a glimmer of tears in the corner of her eyes. Finally, after a long moment, she answered, "Something like that. Will you come with me to my office so we can discuss your placement exams, Mr. Dresden?"

As I followed her out, I caught a look of concern from the school nurse at the both of us, and a whispered, "Oh, Minerva…"


	2. Stone Faced 2: Star Born

##  Wearing Hats

Everyone in the British wizarding world seemed to expect you to know who they were or figure it out from context, so I'd finally identified Minerva McGonagall from the nameplate on her office door. This also informed me that she was the transfiguration professor and the assistant headmistress. The inside of the office was as severe as the rest of her demeanor. Basically a stone closet with a large fireplace and window overlooking the castle grounds, there was not much here other than a small, uncluttered desk, a couple of chairs, and a large, orderly bookshelf. The one thing that stood out was a battered old hat lying on the desk, barely still pointy in the wizarding style. "Recent upgrade?" I asked, gesturing at the much newer witch hat she was wearing.

"Oh, no, that's for you, Mr. Dresden."

Looked like the whole scholarship student thing was about to be brought home. "I don't really wear hats," I demurred.

Her cheek twitched as she sat down and gestured for me to take the chair across the desk. That might have been the closest thing to a smile that would crack through her facade. "You only have to wear it for a minute. I mentioned houses to you before? The students of Hogwarts are sorted based on temperament into one of four groups. The magic of that hat gauges which would suit you best. Normally, this is done on the first day of school in front of all your peers… but I assumed you would prefer not to sit on a stool in between a pair of 11-year-olds at the welcoming feast next month?"

"I don't know, maybe that would set peoples' expectations of me at the right level." I was still upset about the whole situation, but I felt bad for almost making the stone-faced witch cry earlier and was willing to meet her halfway if she was back in a joking mood. "I just put it on?"

She nodded, so I put the decrepit old hat on my head, and thought I felt it wriggle on its own to settle itself. A sensation similar to what Dumbledore had done to me the night before crept over my mind. But where he was looking at my memories almost like a real-time film reel, whatever the hat was doing seemed far faster and more thorough. I couldn't figure out why they used such a powerful artifact for arbitrarily dividing children into peer groups when the auror corps had to send away for their chief warlock to do a fraction of the same work.

After only a moment, I heard a gravelly voice speaking in my mind. "As usual, when I have to do a late sorting, I find something to recommend you to any of the houses. This may be difficult."

"Make your best attempt, hat," I thought at it. "I don't know anything about it."

"Then let me give you a brief overview. Slytherin is the house for the ambitious and cunning, and you're clever enough to make your way there. I fear, however, you might find it hard to belong with the current attitudes of the house.

"Ravenclaw keeps the seekers of knowledge for knowledge's sake, and you have a questing mind and deep interest in magical theory. Yet, I do not think you'd have the patience to solve a riddle every time you wanted to enter your common room.

"Hufflepuff is the home of the loyal, and would go out of their way to welcome you. Many orphans find their way there. But you are unlikely to be content as just one small part of a larger team.

"Gryffindor is the house of the brave, and you certainly have that quality to an almost foolhardy degree. Indeed, I see that you're exactly the type to make a bad quip and take another hit than to ever bend before evil. I almost hate to put you in with others that will only encourage this habit but…

"Better be Gryffindor!" that last seemed to leave my head and be announced to the room, removing the option for me to tell McGonagall that it had said Hufflepuff where I could keep my head down.

Was that pride in the professor's eyes as she gestured for me to put the hat back on the desk? Once it was back in place and I'd run my fingers over a scalp that definitely needed a shower but at least wouldn't have hat hair, she explained, "In addition to my other duties, I serve as head of house for Gryffindor. I am to be your first point of contact for school issues."

"Do they even let you sleep?" I asked, considering how many hats  _ she  _ must wear on a daily basis.

"Strictly on the weekends and school holidays, Mr. Dresden." I was getting it. Bad jokes were my shield against the world, and a stoic mien was hers. But Professor McGonagall was probably a fun person to be around, if you could stay on her good side and get her to relax a bit. She passed a piece of paper to me. Wait, no, it was legitimately a sheet of parchment. PETA would have a field day with this place, if they realized the wizarding world was still on the sheepskin standard. "That's the Hogwarts course list. I'd like you to let me know the generalities of your education in each of those disciplines, so we can prepare the other professors for your placement exams."

A couple of things immediately jumped out to me as weird. "Arithmancy covers spell creation and modification? How much math is actually taught? And do you have any social studies other than history? Wait, is there really no English class? No Latin? Music? PE? Science!?"

McGonagall let out a long-suffering sigh, then explained, "That was almost verbatim the questions a pair of dentists recently asked me when reviewing the curriculum for their daughter. I assume you were taking muggle schooling with your mentor teaching you magic?"

"More or less," I admitted. "I did a lot of home schooling, particularly after we moved here earlier in the year. That's why I wasn't too worried about getting my GED. Sorry, General... Equivalency Diploma. I think that's what it stands for. It's what you can get in the US so you can go to college if you didn't finish high school."

She nodded. "That type of education is typical for most magical students elsewhere in Britain, as well. The majority of witches and wizards are apprenticed in a similar manner as you were, taking their magical education from their parents or from a mentor in the trade they hope to pursue. Still others attend schools arranged for the purpose in various cities around the country. I believe one in central London even has more students than Hogwarts, which only takes up to 40 students per year group. Those schools also cover more muggle subjects. Any such students are allowed to take the two large tests of magical aptitude: the OWLs and NEWTs.

"It is extremely uncommon for anyone from an apprenticeship or smaller school to do well enough on these tests to qualify for a position in the Ministry. A fair number qualify as aurors and healers, due to some academies specifically created to ensure specialized training for those jobs. But the vast majority are partially-trained in magic and must content themselves in trades. They'll never qualify for work in the magical government…"

I thought I followed her. "So they'll never get a chance to change the laws making them second-class citizens. Meanwhile, Hogwarts teaches specifically to those tests?"

"I was a bit more politic with the parents of an 11-year-old, but, essentially, yes. But you have it backwards: the test is actually based on the Hogwarts curriculum, as the oldest magic school in the country. Unfortunately, at this point it's a self-reinforcing cycle. We set the standards, but are now trapped by them. And they haven't changed meaningfully in centuries. I would love to offer a larger range of classes, but the more we add to the curriculum, the less time the students have to prepare for what's on the tests…"

Suddenly, a lot of Justin's behaviors hit me, and I concluded, "Most of the government, who controls these standards, entered from Hogwarts. And none of their coworkers are likely to call them on what they don't know. Meanwhile, their bosses were born in the 1800s anyway, because wizards live so long, and haven't kept up with the last century of technology. So they can't go out into the rest of the world without being completely confused and scared by what they see there."

She just sighed, and nodded. "That is, in fact, quite a succinct description of the recent conflicts in British wizarding society. If you have the time around your other classes, we are quite happy to help you take correspondence courses to maintain the other disciplines you feel are lacking."

"Still, though," I couldn't stop arguing, "no literature or Latin courses? British schools have been mad for those for centuries."

"Hogwarts was founded so long ago that there was significantly less English literary tradition. And the classes were originally  _ taught  _ in Latin. As the language died slowly, nobody ever realized it now needed to be its own class to understand spell phrases. Professor Vector has to do a significant remedial Latin module for starting Arithmancy students before they can begin to understand the spells they're creating."

I felt like I was already getting good at reading this woman, despite her dislike of making facial expressions, and the feeling I was getting mirrored the deep frustration of several other teachers I'd met that felt hamstrung by government standards. "I'll just… go over this list then?"

Her response was extremely dry. "That would be excellent. Thank you, Mr. Dresden."

##  Forest for the Trees

The next couple of days were a strange dance of getting me situated. Despite McGonagall's protests, Hogwarts was  _ not  _ really prepared for a penniless 15-year-old with unusual training to show up to school a month early with nothing but the clothes on his back. My corner of the fifth year boys' room in Gryffindor tower had become highly thrift-shop chic with all the school supplies that had been dug up from the school's lost and found.

Each of the other four beds in the room anchored a handful of belongings left behind for the summer by their occupants, and I was grateful that nothing indicated my dorm-mates were going to be snobby purebloods obsessed with new clothes. At least my secondhand robes had been re-tailored to mostly fit me. When I'd first gotten them, I had a substantial amount of wrist and ankle escaping.

Clothes and the like were the least of my supply issues, however. "While I'm sure it's not your preferred method, I think we can find you a suitable wand to at least demonstrate competency," McGonagall insisted.

I knew that wouldn't work. Magically speaking, I was the asshole that you would never trust to drive your Porsche without burning out the gearbox, but who could do all kinds of tricks in a diesel-engined pickup. But I failed to come up with a metaphor that would work for a witch without a lot of experience of technology. I just tried to explain it as, "Justin tried to teach me wands starting out, and I burned out every one he handed me. Magically, I'm a clumsy brute."

She clearly didn't believe me, but equally didn't want to see me break an expensive wand if I wasn't exaggerating. "I've never heard of such a thing. Albus uses a wand without issue, and he's the most powerful wizard I know of." When I just shrugged, she allowed, "Perhaps he'll have some insight."

After a brief floo call to the headmaster (one of the most confusing things entering magical society was their love of using fireplaces for communication and transport), he stepped through into McGonagall's office. The other night's outfit was apparently not pajamas, as today's was an equally flamboyant violet-and-emerald-moons ensemble. "I hear you have a problem with controlling your wand, my boy," he winked.

I still wasn't over how he'd kept quiet about what he'd seen in my head and seemed to be avoiding any chance of giving me answers. So perhaps I was a bit too forward with my retort that, "I hear many witches prefer a big staff to a well-controlled wand." McGonagall made a small, irritated intake of breath that let me know I'd be in trouble later, but Dumbledore merely grinned.

"That was certainly true in history, if not so much recently." He set what looked like a slightly-oversized cigar box on McGonagall's desk and flipped it open to reveal that it was packed full of wands. Most of them were heavily scratched and dinged up. "See if you can find one that feels compatible. All of these are at the end of their practical service, so it's no hardship if you destroy one in the testing."

This wasn't the first time I'd done such an exercise, and I had a good feel for foci after learning to make my own. It didn't take long for me to select one with a reasonably close resonance to my own magic. I held it in my right hand and pushed a trickle of power through it as proof, causing it to emit orange sparks.

"Excellent. Perhaps a simple wand-lighting charm to start?" the headmaster suggested.

I nodded and tried to be gentle, wordlessly casting the light spell into the wand. The tip burst into brilliant white light that was painful to look at directly. It also flickered alarmingly, like a spotlight on a transformer about to blow. Within a couple of seconds I thought I was about to lose it and canceled the spell.

"Very interesting. I have a suspicion. Perhaps the levitation charm?" He produced a paisley handkerchief from a pocket and dropped it on the floor between us and the door.

I knew what he was getting at, and got out of the chair, pushing it away from the handkerchief. " _ Wingardium leviosa! _ " I swished. I flicked. There was a simultaneous snapping and ripping sound as the wand shattered into splinters that disturbed the paisley-colored snow that floated in the air above where the handkerchief once was. "That's pretty normal," I admitted. "Sorry about your handkerchief."

"Quite alright, my boy," he allowed. "Minerva, perhaps I can shed some light on the situation. You see, Mr. Dresden isn't exactly unusual. It's just that wizards or witches of his temperament don't tend to make it to Hogwarts, or fail out quickly due to not taking to wands. Reports are that one of the incoming students, Mr. Finnegan, is likely to be a risk case of this kind."

"So he needs remedial wand-handling classes?" she asked.

Dumbledore shook his head. "If he was 11, and this was a mild problem, it might be correctable, but would also permanently handicap him as a wizard. Consider an analogy of wands as delicate rapiers. You would struggle to find an expert swordfighter who was not a master of the rapier. Yet imagine handing one to our large friend, Hagrid. Does the fact that he tends to break the delicate blade mean that he is hopeless as a fighter?"

I answered for her, since I already knew the metaphor. "No, you hand him an axe or greatsword." This was exactly why I'd asked Dumbledore if this was a dueling school.

"Exactly. Minerva, Mr. Dresden simply has a magical strength that far outstrips his magical finesse. Even training him to use a wand without destroying it would mean limiting him to the level of that finesse, while constantly having strength that wasn't able to be applied. It may be challenging to adapt some of our standard lessons, but I support his request to create his own foci. It might be interesting to see if we can better accommodate some of the other students in this manner as well. After all, Godric Gryffindor himself preferred to cast with sword and rod."

"Very well," McGonagall agreed, seeming to see the sense of it. "I'll move the charms, defense, and transfiguration tests later and contact Professor Babbling about whether making your own foci would serve as a useful test of your knowledge of ancient runes. I think we have a large stock of cores and other materials in the runes lab but Mr. Dresden will need to find compatible wood from the forest. So speaking of Hagrid…"

And that's how I found myself meeting the only person in the castle taller than me.

It wasn't even a contest. If Professor McGonagall was standing on my shoulders, she could  _ maybe  _ look Hagrid in the eyes. While I'm sure the job of gamekeeper suited him, he'd probably want to stay outside in his oversized shack even if he had another job. I wasn't sure he could even fit through all the corridors of the school I'd passed through. But he appeared to have an extremely friendly and pleasant nature. If you were that big and  _ difficult  _ to get along with, it wouldn't be long before people got out the pitchforks.

"Yer a wizard, Harry?" he asked me as we set out into that afternoon into the apparently-forbidden forest. He'd tied up his long, curly hair and beard as a nod to the warm summer day, and his giant black hound dog bounded along after us. "It's just, I never met no wizard, didn't use a wand. Even I could use a wand, back when I were at Hogwarts. Had'ta get one twice as big as the other students, o'course, or wouldn't'a fit in my hand."

"I… actually might be able to make due with something like that," I admitted. "My blasting rod wasn't much bigger than that. Different way of setting up the core, though. Did you have to special order one that big?"

"Oh, aye, Ollivander didn't want ter do it, neither. He hates to custom-make wands fer folk. Likes'ta just make up a whole load'a different ones and hope y'ill find one that matches ya." He stomped over a hillock into a part of the woods that was already getting darker due to the dense tree-cover. I didn't add anything, and he ventured, "It broke my heart when they snapped it."

I could tell this was a difficult conversation, and thought about just leaving it alone, but I bit and asked, "Why would they do that?"

"Bad business back when I were in school. Got blamed fer somethin' I didn't do. It's real easy to expel the big chap. Can't have a wand if ya don't finish school. Dumbledore's a great man, though. At least I have a job an' a house."

"Well, as someone the Ministry also just tried to railroad, that sounds even crazier than what I'm going through. Bet you didn't even get a trial."

"O'course not. Another student's word against mine, an' he were the  _ old  _ headmaster's favorite. To be fair, truth potion don't work too well on a guy my size. An' it were all Dumbledore could do at the time pushing to keep me out of Azkaban…" We crested another rise and dropped to a part of the forest that looked more like an orchard, all the trees in regular rows without too much undergrowth. "Anyway, here's one of the tree farms. All old growth hardwood. Oh no, shame about that one."

Hagrid had noticed an oak tree in the back that looked like it had split open from a lightning strike. It was a wonder it hadn't lit it and the rest of the woods on fire. Maybe it was during a hard rainstorm. While I was looking at all the other trees, and even grabbed a couple of dry fallen branches that might make good blasting rods, the lightning-struck tree was calling to me somehow. When I touched the trunk, I knew that this was exactly the kind of resonance I'd been looking for.

I wasn't expecting a swarm of fist-sized spiders to rush out of the middle of the storm-split tree trunk and right toward me.

##  The Stars Speak

I wasn't expecting to be attacked by a swarm of spiders, and I especially wasn't expecting the spider swarm to be chirping out things like "Hungry!" and "Food!" in tiny voices. Fortunately, I did not fall on my ass from surprise. My stride is long enough that even backpedaling, I was keeping ahead of the disturbing, chittering carpet coming toward me.

"Oy! You lot! Get away!" yelled Hagrid, slowly charging across the clearing, but they didn't seem to be listening and I wasn't exactly sure what one big man, a dog, and a crossbow were going to be able to do to stop an infestation of this scale. Plus, I was a little freaked out and may have been on the verge of developing a new phobia.

It would have been a lot easier if I'd already made my foci, but beggars couldn't be choosers when there was a wall of talking arachnids bearing down on you. I gathered up my magic, flung my right hand while envisioning the effect I wanted, and yelled, " _ Bombarda _ !" With a blasting rod, I can make the exploding charm drill through a couple feet of cinderblocks. Without a focus, the force spread out a lot, which actually worked better in this case. A ripple of force like the trailing edge of one of those slow-motion shots of a bomb going off shimmered through the air and flung the entire swarm of oversized spiders back across the clearing.

I didn't notice any of them turn into spider goo, and I thought I even heard a few scream "Whee!" as they flew, so, I guessed everything was alright? Hagrid had been yelling at them like they were sentient, so hopefully there wasn't an even bigger mommy spider somewhere that would be mad I'd defended myself from her kids. And, bonus, the wave had knocked one of the bigger branches off the tree. I reached over to check it out, and it felt dry and solid. Exactly what I'd been looking for.

"Sorry 'bout tha'," Hagrid panted, lumbering over, "I'll have to have another talk with Aragog about keepin' his kids out o' this part o' the forest." He surveyed the area and then nodded, "Guess ya weren't kiddin' 'bout not needin' a wand."

"A focus definitely helps," I admitted, gesturing with the fallen branch. "Hopefully I'll be able to make some good ones out of these."

"A fine choice. Storm-struck and won through battle," said a strangely resonant voice from behind us. Hagrid whirled around leveling his portable ballista and I started to charge another attack. I wasn't expecting to see a romance novel cover wandering through the trees toward us. A decent Fabio knock-off from the waist up, it took me a moment to notice he was a horse from the waist down. Maybe the forest was actually forbidden to keep young witches from running off with the centaurs.

"Oh, Firenze! Ya snuck up on us," Hagrid exhaled, lowering his giant crossbow. "We're jus' out here collectin' wood for Harry here ta make some big wands. Harry, this is Firenze. He's a seer."

The horse-man nodded in greetings, his long golden hair flowing about in a way that had to involve magic to not see him constantly getting it hung up on low-hanging brambles. "Perhaps not wands, after that display of unfocused magic. The stars spoke to me of a young man that would come to the school wielding old magics. They also say darkness walks behind him. Will you stand against this chasing darkness, or merely try to stay ahead of it? After all, we once pinned our hopes on another young man named Harry…"

The centaur didn't seem like he actually wanted an answer, and I'd never been a huge fan of divination, so I just asked him a question right back. "Do the stars speak of whether I'm going to get railroaded into wizard prison no matter what I do?"

He just shrugged. "The darkness can represent many things. Even deep in the forest, we hear tales of the corruption within the wizards' government. Though the Dark Lord was banished nearly ten cycles ago, the conditions that led to his rise are still present. Stars smile upon you, Harry. You'll need all the fortune you can get." With that pronouncement, he turned and cantered off into the woods.

"Tha's just centaurs for ya', Harry," Hagrid chuckled, "They're always showin' up talkin' 'bout the stars. My guess is tha' they get just as worried 'bout the future as the rest of us. Ya get what ya needed?"

"I hope so," I acknowledged. Hagrid was nice enough to take the large branch from me to carry, while I tied together the smaller sticks to take back. As we started heading toward the school, I asked, "So there's a Dark Lord, huh? And everyone's worried he'll come back?"

"Not everyone," the big man sighed. "Most folk jus' take for granted tha' he's gone. Dumbledore's been tryin' ta get them ta make changes for a decade, in case he comes back. Some'a the stuff tha's been happ'nin' this summer, It makes me nervous. Even if he's really gone… well, like the man said, wouldn't be hard fer another dark wizard ta' move in and start righ' back up." He shook his head, as if to physically banish the dark thoughts. "Don' tell the little ones tha', though, alrigh'? We try ta keep Hogwarts a hopeful place for the young'ns."

"You ever think that maybe you  _ should  _ tell the kids what's going on earlier, since they're the ones who go on to the Ministry and keep it corrupt?" I asked.

We walked for a few minutes in silence as Hagrid thought, for him to finally admit, "Mebbe so. It's jus' hard ta look a' those innocen' li'l faces an' think, 'This one's not even twen'y years from bein' a corrupt politician.'" He sighed and thought for another second, and added, "Pro'ly should, though. Got a Malfoy comin' in this year. Ran inta that boy the other day in the alley. Already a real piece'o work."

It was hard to look at such a cheerful, giant man so down, so as we walked back up to his cabin, I tried to soften what I'd been saying. "It's probably not guaranteed, or anything. I've changed a lot since I was 11. Maybe you can keep assuming they're good kids. Just try to give them more perspective, earlier." I tried to add in a joke. "I mean, they're not a lost cause until they're nearly 16, after all."

I don't think he got it. Maybe I didn't get it either.


	3. Stone Faced 3: Field Trips

## Proper Placement

The runes lab was, in fact, as well stocked as McGonagall had insisted. My first placement test was Professor Babbling overseeing my plan for making a new blasting rod, staff, and shield bracelet. She seemed impressed, and said she didn't think there would be much to catch up on before I was at the same level as the rest of her class.

Unfortunately, Justin had not put much focus on astronomy at all, short of the basics of using a calendar to plan for ritually-significant dates. Meanwhile, Hogwarts for some reason thought it was a more important class than runes and taught it starting with first-years. The professor seemed to think that I'd be _in_ her class with the first-years, if I didn't make some major headway memorizing the heavens.

Since they were electives and I was definitely already interested in arithmancy and runes to fill those slots, I didn't bother with placement for divination or care of magical creatures. McGonagall suggested that I take the muggle studies test just as an experiment. Turns out, I was already ready to pass my NEWTs on the subject. Personally, I figured I knew more about the subject than the professor. After the test, McGonagall acknowledged my assertion that this was a _big problem_.

The distracted and terse potions professor decided that my technique was adequate for my age, though I hadn't made some of the potions that were part of the curriculum and I'd need to know them for the OWLs. Similarly, the related herbology class had a similar result: competent but missing certain plants that were important to the British tests. To my credit, most of them didn't grow in America, and I could probably recognize a bunch of plants these kids had never seen.

My pidgin Latin that I'd always been ashamed of was apparently far ahead of grade level here, and the magic theory Justin had drilled me on was comprehensive. Professor Vector seemed excited to have me in her arithmancy class, especially since my C+ in high school geometry and algebra was way ahead of the mathematical background most of these kids had.

Justin had seen zero sense in training me to ride a broom when there were so many ways to teleport even if I didn't want to just drive a car, so the bird-aspected flying professor declared me completely hopeless for her class. Fortunately, it wasn't actually on the OWLs, just their PE-equivalent. McGonagall seemed strangely disappointed and muttered something about still being down a seeker. Similarly, we had wasted no time whatsoever on British wizarding history. The ghost that taught the class had provided me a parchment that was mostly asking the dates of various goblin rebellions. I figured I might just see how much of that I could self-study, if not skip entirely.

Finally, after a couple of weeks, I had the requisite tools to take the tests for what Hogwarts thought of as "wand magic" classes.

I actually didn't wind up using them much in McGonagall's transfiguration test, since her tasks were more on the vein of taking as long as I needed to turn a hedgehog into a pincushion than the combat transfigurations that Justin was so fond of. With all the time in the world, she was surprised to watch me ignore the foci she'd so generously given me time to make only to scribe a chalk circle around the animal or object and treat the transfiguration as a short ritual rather than a charm. "Why the circle, Mr. Dresden?"

"Like the headmaster explained, I have way more power than finesse. When I have time to treat it as a ritual, I can charge up the circle and then slowly shape what I want it to do. Justin called this thaumaturgy. Do you not teach that here?" With that little zinger, I released the circle and the hedgehog immediately popped directly into a pincushion, as she'd specified.

"Five points to Gryffindor!" she exclaimed, even despite what she'd taken to referring to as _cheek_. "I'm not sure if those points will stand, as we have not technically begun the year. But good show. I'm quite looking forward to how the rest of the class will respond to your alternate form of these techniques. Now… have you learned the vanishing charm, yet?"

After hitting a few more points of the transfiguration curriculum in unexpected ways, my next test was charms. The professor was so tiny and obviously so smart that I almost missed some instructions because I was busy imaging a buddy comedy starring him and Hagrid. I was pretty sure I'd seen a motorcycle with a sidecar in Hagrid's barn, and it would just be _perfect_.

If anything, Flitwick was more confused by the variability in my capabilities than most of the other professors. With my staff and blasting rod ready to go, I effortlessly demonstrated exploding, banishing, fire-making, freezing, and all the other charms that involved directing energy or motion at a target and were considered age-appropriate magic. But I was a complete blank on things like the cheering charm and tickling charm that were taught to first-years. "Mr. Dresden. Have you studied anything _besides_ combat magic?" asked the half-goblin.

I gave an apologetic smile and said, "In hindsight, it was pretty obvious that my mentor wasn't really a good person, sir."

"Well, we'll just have to show you that there's more to magic than dueling. This year should find you well ahead on the more offensive magics we teach, but I hope you can master some of the more subtle charms. In particular, I doubt any of your foci are appropriate to most of that part of the curriculum. My challenge to you, Mr. Dresden, is to come up with a focus that will accommodate those effects. I can provide you some examples of how the Goblin Nation accomplishes such things, as they are not allowed to use wands. You see, it's not your lack of a wand that surprises me, it's your utterly martial focus in your education."

And then it was on to defense against the dark arts. It seemed like a weird hodgepodge of a subject, as if magical combat wasn't enough to fill a class period so they stole pieces from charms and magical creatures class as well. McGonagall had even let slip that they'd had trouble keeping a long-term professor for the last several years, with some professors being more competent than others and some wildly deviating from the lesson plan. Which meant I had no idea what to expect would be required for fifth year competence.

I wasn't expecting my teacher to be lurking just inside the door of the classroom as I walked in, standing by a large item of furniture awkwardly placed amid the normal tables and chairs. "Ah, D-D-Dresden," stuttered the skinny man in the elaborate turban. "Are you r-ready t-to b-begin your exam?" I shrugged and he stepped away from what I could now see was a freestanding wardrobe behind him, opening the door as he went.

Emerging from the shadows within was a young woman's form. As the light hit her, I noticed that she was very badly burned, bones showing through her skin and blackened clothing indistinguishable from charred flesh. As the shambling dead girl's milky eyes blindly cast about to look at me, she spoke in the unmistakable voice of my girlfriend, Elaine, "Harry… how could you do this to me?"

## Up Your Alley

I hadn't fallen on my ass when I was swarmed by spiders, but I did when confronted by the walking corpse of my girlfriend. It's hard to look like a hardened battle wizard when you're all legs and elbows, trying to scrabble backwards across the stone floor to escape. My first love's charred husk shambled slowly after me, asking, "I was under the imperius, Harry. I needed you to save me. Instead. Instead, you made me into this. Harry, just hold me. Why won't you come to me, love?"

Why would this asshole of a professor spring something like this on me? Had someone found her near the house? Was fiendfyre dark enough to reanimate her, or was it something that Justin's ritual did? Perhaps that wraith possessed her instead? Could someone be evil enough to find her body and reanimate it just to screw with me like this? There were so many easier ways to punish me.

The man in the turban just looked on calmly from behind, with perhaps an interested but in no way triumphant expression on his face. Was this just part of the exam? Were the reanimated dead on the _fourth year_ syllabus?

Wait. The exam. What might a younger student need to fight against that fit the equation? As Justin always drilled into me through quite painful lessons, ignore your pain, work past your fear, and solve the problem. Inferi still gave aurors difficulties, and undead with minds were even rarer and harder to fight. And why was it so specific to me? Why keep it in a closet?

It finally came to me as I hit the wall and couldn't scramble any further, and it took me another precious few moments to remember the counter and visualize what I wanted to happen. Her blackened hands were inches from my face when I shouted, " _Riddikulus!_ " and channeled my magic. She suddenly transformed into the least threatening shambling dead person I could think of, the Fruity-Yummy Mummy from the cereal boxes. I gave a half-hearted laugh, and the boggart was sucked like it was on a bungee cord back into the cabinet, which the professor slammed shut behind it.

He leaned, relaxed, against the cabinet, and gave me a somewhat sarcastic clap. "Well, D-D-Dresden, that was t-truly a f-f-fear t-to b-behold. I suspect the n-new third years will n-not have anywhere n-n-near such an elaborate horror." He tilted his head in thought, then admitted, "With that d-degree of m-monster and without any warning, I'll have t-to c-c-call that an excellent effort."

Still trying to collect myself, and feeling the massive bruise spreading across my ass, I snarked, "Is that the whole exam, or do you need me to come back when you've gotten something else terrifying to surprise me with? Full moon's in, what, a week? I can come back then for the werewolf."

He gave me an extremely calculating look, then smirked. "N-no, I think that will b-be sufficient for the p-p-practical. I've written on the b-board several of the other c-c-creatures c-covered through fourth year. An oral examination of how t-to c-c-counter them should suffice."

The exam was pretty easy, after that. I honestly wasn't sure why this class needed to be anything more than an irregular seminar if all it taught was how to fight or evade a handful of dangerous creatures. Maybe because it took Quirrell three times as long to explain everything with that stutter? Before I left, he intimated that he was considering working my style of magic into his fifth-year classes this year, which might at least make the class less of a waste of my time.

Ultimately, other than being way behind on astronomy and British wizarding history, and needing to catch up on a few arbitrary points of the other subjects, McGonagall was happy to pass me on to take classes with people my own age. Especially since I didn't give a damn about passing the British tests, except so far as they wouldn't have an excuse to throw me out of school and back into Azkaban, I figured I'd get by.

Considering I expected to have another week of trying to catch up and working on foci, it was a surprise to me when McGonagall called me to her office on the last Sunday of August, dressed for the outdoors. "Are you interested in leaving the castle, Mr. Dresden?"

I smirked, "I knew it. Quirrell _is_ going to make me fight a werewolf, and just wanted me to let my guard down."

"While I applaud keeping track of the full moon, as paying attention to the sky will only help repair your woefully inadequate knowledge of astronomy, I don't intend to be out nearly as late as moonrise." She gave me a moment to internalize just how thoroughly I'd been out-snarked. Oh, yeah, we were starting to understand one another. "A few of your fifth year materials and texts are not in adequate supply in the castle. I was informed that several of your housemates will be picking up their own school supplies today, so it seemed reasonable to me that taking you along would be beneficial, rather than just sending away for them."

"Pick up school supplies. Make some new friends to beat the rush. Got it."

Clearly I hadn't been sufficiently enthusiastic. "We can, of course, skip the trip if you aren't up to it."

I tried to put on a smile and think about the positives. "No, no, I appreciate the opportunity to get out of here for a little while."

McGonagall fixed me with a suspicious stare. "I expect that you will not attempt to flee or otherwise do something to cause trouble. From what Albus has informed me, at least one senior auror is likely to take advantage of such a slip." I'd been learning from her poker face, and thought I held onto how close she'd come to my plans. After a moment more of waiting for me to slip, she nodded and lit her fire. "I'm always disappointed when the school year starts and our personal floo connections are limited outside the castle for security reasons. You've used this method of travel before? We're headed to Diagon Alley."

She waited for me to take a pinch of floo powder and precede her. I idly wondered if this method of travel was working off the same theory that allowed Dumbledore's phoenix to transport him. It was the only thing that made this have any sense whatsoever. After an endless moment whirling through the flaming void that was Britain's floo network, I managed to keep my balance after being spit out in a dingy pub. Apparently, I didn't rate a second glance before the clientele went back to their breakfasts. McGonagall was only a few seconds behind me, and she at least rated a, "Morning, Minerva," from several of the patrons.

It took me a moment to realize that this was the interface between London and Diagon Alley. When Justin had brought us here a couple of times, we'd just taken a bus in and come through the front door. I followed the professor through the back and watched her tap a code onto the bricks of the back alley. As the wall faded away, I asked, "If muggles can't see the pub anyway, why do you need to know the secret to get through here?"

"The anti-muggle charms on the Leaky Cauldron aren't foolproof, and some of our enemies are magical but can't open the wall," she explained. "Let me know when you've caught up sufficiently on your history texts to tell me about all the times this wall was the final barrier against calamity."

"Fair enough," I allowed, wincing internally at getting new homework. I actually had two suspicions. One was that someone had just worked really hard on the persistent enchantment to get the wall to slide out of the way a brick at a time. The other was that McGonagall could now use remedial homework as a way to get out of answering difficult questions.

"Here's the list of purchases you need to make, and the galleons to cover it," she said, handing me a strip of parchment and a small coin purse from a pocket inside her jacket. "The Weasleys are skilled bargain hunters, so if you let them guide you, there may be enough left over for discretionary items."

We hadn't gotten deep into the Renaissance Festival-style strip mall that was Diagon Alley before McGonagall spotted the crowd we were apparently here to meet. They would be difficult to miss, since it was so rare to see so many redheads in one place. A boy about my age that seemed to be the eldest of the group apart from the obvious parents noticed us first, and got his mother's attention as they moved from one shop to the next.

While the rest waited for us to make our way over to them, the young man rushed over to us. Up close, it was obvious that he was wound extremely tightly, as he gushed, "Professor, I just cannot thank you enough for the privilege. I swear that I shall not let you down." I didn't yet really have an ear for the different English dialects, but it struck me that he was fighting very hard to speak in the "proper" received pronunciation, rather than his native accent.

It was an interesting contrast with the professor's unrepentant Scottish brogue, "I don't doubt it, Mr. Weasley. Mr. Dresden, this is one of your roommates, and the new boy's prefect for Gryffindor, Percival Weasley. This is Harry Dresden, who is transferring to Hogwarts from a private apprenticeship. I hope you'll be able to fit some time in amongst your duties and studies to look out for him."

I got the impression that Percival was about to start stammering excuses about his very limited time, and was just trying to figure out how to do so politely to his head of house. McGonagall saw it too, and sweetened the offer, "Mr. Dresden was taught a very unusual style of spellwork, that emphasizes wandless magic and making his own focus items. While he needs some help catching up in certain subjects, I believe he could be a great help to _you_ in arithmancy, runes, and defense."

That caught his attention, and actually had him considering me rather than dismissing me out of hand. After a moment, he extended a hand, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Dresden. I look forward to this arrangement."

He had a nervous, somewhat limp handshake, but I got a sense of a strong, controlled magical core. "Likewise. Do you go by Percival or…"

"Percy! You're taking too long!" said one of the other boys, who appeared to be a couple years younger, as he walked up next to us.

"Yeah! We all want to meet him," insisted another one that appeared to be a mirror image, flanking Percy from the other side.

I could feel Percy tense up as they approached, before withdrawing his hand from the handshake. I thought he also had a small nervous tic in one eye from the twins interrupting. "Percy is, indeed, fine. I suppose going by 'Weasley' will be just as hard this year."

"You're assuming a lot about whether Ron's going to make it into the house," one twin asserted.

"Charlie graduated last year," the other explained to me, "so we'll be back up to four if Ron gets in."

"Five next year, with Ginny!" added the first.

Assuming they could keep up this patter forever, I answered Percy, who was mentally retreating into his shell in the face of the barrage, "Then please call me Harry, to make things even. I don't really get the last name thing. I called my old mentor by his first name."

"What a sense of fair play!" the second twin applauded.

"I feel like we're bosom friends already," continued the first. "In that spirit, I'm Fred."

"And I'm George," explained the second. They looked at each other and shrugged. "Unless we got that backwards again."

I could suddenly see why Percy was so high-strung. Having these two for little brothers was probably _exhausting_. McGonagall already looked tired, and she'd presumably had a whole summer free from them. She looked like she was sending some kind of nonverbal signal to their mother to rescue her.

"Fred! George! What did I say!?" the short but seemingly formidable woman shouted at them from across the alley. "Best behavior! No antics!"

"Yes, mum!" they chorused, suddenly all angelic smiles, and headed back to the rest of their family. Percy led me over slightly behind, and McGonagall still further back, likely wondering if she'd made a huge mistake.

As we approached, their mother took it upon herself to introduce the rest of the clan before the twins could do so. She was a hugger, it turned out, which was unexpected. I had a brief moment of not knowing what to do with my arms and then I was free. "I'm Molly Weasley, this is my husband Arthur, you've met Percival, Fred, and George, and my youngest are Ronald and Ginevra." ("Ron and Ginny" the twins insisted, sotto voice.) She continued, ignoring the distraction, "Minerva mentioned you were a new transfer to Gryffindor?"

"He's so tall, and came in on Percy's year, just _imagine_ the size of the troll they made him wrestle," one of the twins whispered to Ron. The tiny boy's eyes widened so much they nearly popped out of his head.

I tried not to snort at the boy winding up his brother, and answered Mrs. Weasley with the sanitized version of the story I'd worked out. "I had a private apprenticeship and my mentor brought me to Britain a few months ago. He died suddenly and left me in a tight spot. Headmaster Dumbledore was kind enough to make sure I didn't get… lost in the system, I guess."

While that seemed to satisfy Mrs. Weasley, there was a snort of derision from a nearby doorway, as Auror Dawlish leaned around revealing that he'd been eavesdropping. "'Died suddenly' is certainly a pleasant way of describing it. Why don't you tell your new friends what _really_ happened, Dresden?"

## Cat Ladies

The man who'd decided to make himself my archenemy slouched off the wall and stood to face me down from across the field of redheads. He was still wearing his dirty trenchcoat and muggle suit, which made him stand out even more amid all the robes. "Maybe your new friends would like to ask you about how your house burned down with your mentor still inside. They might even wonder, like I do, what happened to the other teenager I found out was registered as living in that house. Did you kill Elaine Mallory, too, Dresden?"

That seemed to steal my breath away, like a physical punch to the gut. I barely noticed my hand drifting into my robes for my blasting rod, but, in hindsight, Dawlish did. He was smirking and cradling a wand up his sleeve, clearly just waiting for me to take a shot. Fortunately, McGonagall was right behind me and not inclined to let this play out. "John Dawlish! If I could still take points from you, I would. Imagine, such provocation against a student on a school shopping trip."

Despite his carefully cultivated exterior as a maverick cop, I thought I saw him wilt a bit under her attention. "Just saw his trace move to the Alley, professor. He could have been pulling a runner. It's all completely legal."

"If you have nothing better to do than rush out to chaperone a student's shopping trip, then there's little I can say about that," McGonagall allowed, "but you can do that _without_ confronting him with unsubstantiated allegations in front of a crowd. If you have more questions about your case, Hogwarts is happy to arrange additional interviews with his magical guardian present."

Maybe he hadn't actually seen the assistant headmistress behind me when he jumped in, because Dawlish seemed to take a moment trying to come up with a comeback and find nothing. Lamely, he admitted, "Fair enough." Trying to saunter away without turning his back to us, he tossed off, "See you around, Dresden."

Entertainment over, the bystanders that had been gathering continued on their way. The Weasleys had the presence of mind to wait until Dawlish was out of earshot, but probably still lurking nearby, before starting up. "Did you really kill your mentor?" asked the youngest boy, Ron.

"Headmaster Dumbledore has done his own research and declared Mr. Dresden not guilty," explained McGonagall, further increasing my appreciation of the woman.

Arthur Weasley added his two cents for the first time, "Auror Dawlish has a reputation around the Ministry. Among other sterling personal qualities, he doesn't like to let go of his first suspect despite what the evidence says." Between those two assertions, that seemed to mollify everyone, though I could tell the kids would be looking for opportunities to dig for more information later. Molly Weasley started leading us further into the alley and her husband fell back to ask me an unrelated question. "We recently got an interesting load of muggle artifacts in the Misuse office, and they have us stumped. Minerva mentioned you were raised muggle, and I was wondering if you had any inkling about the intended function of a rubber duck…"

After assuring Mr. Weasley that, indeed, rubber duckies with time-delayed charms _would_ be an innocuous method of delivering mischief in the muggle world, we were able to engage in shopping. While it was constant chaos moving five young Weasleys from store to store, Mrs. Weasley somehow kept them more or less in orbit and on task. The professor had been right: they definitely had an eye for bargains, as one must with a family that size. Given how the parents doted on young Ginny, I realized my initial assumption of "Wizard Catholics?" was probably incorrect and they'd just wanted a daughter badly enough to keep trying.

With their help, I'd filled out the supply list and still had a few coins left over. While my practical side suggested that I should look into how to convert it into muggle cash, since I presently couldn't even take a bus out of London if I needed to, everyone would be extremely suspicious if I suggested a trip to the bank to change out my money. Instead, I laid out for a few uncommon components that didn't seem to be in the student-accessible cupboards at the school.

"Wideye potion is third year," Percy stated, after working out what I was doing from the ingredients. "Are you planning to revise for the OWLs with that or…"

I shrugged, "Not exactly, but it seemed like a useful potion to keep on hand. I'm thinking about making some girding potion, too. Do you think these doxy eggs will keep?"

While Percy was suddenly having a revelation about making potions as performance-enhancers instead of just to turn in for a grade, I felt a bump and a piece of paper being pushed into my hand. The ingredients shop was packed, but a moment later I caught a glance at a woman leaving the store. Her hair color and outfit was unfamiliar, but the amused, mad-eyed glance out of fine-boned features made it obvious who I was dealing with. She blew me a kiss as she sauntered out of the store, and was under a disillusion veil before I could see which way she went.

My overly-finicky roommate was still trying to figure out whether the doxy eggs were a good buy, so I glanced at the card that had been slipped into my hand.

_Saw your run-in. The trace is a problem. Be sure to take the train. I'll have a solution for you. -L_

Great, my godmother was meddling again. As if I didn't have a big enough problem with Dawlish following me, she was too. At least I knew what the auror's intentions were. Worrying about that madwoman's plans wasn't going to let me sleep easy.

In fact, the whole collection of issues finally hit me that night, after I'd managed to extricate myself from the Weasleys and get back to Hogwarts. Dawlish bringing Elaine back up broke down whatever repressing I'd been doing on Quirrell's boggart, and that, in particular, resulted in some truly outstanding nightmares. I'd given up sleep as unlikely and slipped down to the runes lab to make some more progress on focus items. I'd gotten a nice pile of leather trimmings that I thought I might be able to do something with.

I'd been working in the firelight for a couple of hours before I noticed the cat perched on the hearth. She was a skinny thing, dust-colored with golden eyes. I gave her a closed-lipped smile and nodded at the fire, "I agree that it's ridiculous that they already have to run the fireplaces and it's still August. Scotland, am I right?"

With an interested tilt of her head, the cat began stalking toward me, with a weird hesitance. At first I thought she was skittish, but it was more like she thought I was going to run than that she was planning to. It took the better part of a minute for her to cross the ten feet from the fire and leap up on my worktable. I grabbed a discarded strip of leather and started twitching it across the table like a mouse tail. Another strange look at me like she wasn't entirely sure how to play, and then she pounced on the strip and started playing with abandon.

I'd given up on getting any more work done and was just sitting on my stool petting the cat when an old, hunched man shuffled into the room. I'd seen him around over the past few weeks, but hadn't figured out what he did. "Ah! Not even classes yet and already a late night wanderer! You're supposed to be in bed, boy!"

I hadn't actually even thought about a curfew, used to setting my own schedule as long as I didn't bother anyone else. But I guess it made sense, with a bunch of kids running around without parents in a big magical castle, that you wouldn't want to try to figure out which ones were responsible enough to wander. And I didn't want to disturb my new feline friend enough to rail against unjust authority. So I just nodded and said, "Sorry, sir. Had some nightmares and they didn't tell me about a curfew."

For a moment, I saw a sneer forming and worried he was going to make an issue of it no matter how polite I'd been, but then he finally noticed me petting the cat, and that shocked him. "Never seen Mrs. Norris take to anyone else like that."

"I like cats," I acknowledged, "and she's a sweetheart." The cat gave a faint meow that sounded almost exactly like, "Yeah!" that had both me and the old man snorting in laughter.

"What's that you're working on, anyway?" he asked, looking over at my stitched-together leather pieces.

I stretched it out so he could see that it was almost vest-shaped. "Hopefully a protective jerkin, if the charms will take."

"Aye, that's a good idea. Seen plenty of kids hexed in the back around here." He thought about it for a second, clearly interested. "You an enchanter?"

I gave him the wavy-hand so-so gesture, admitting, "I'm pretty solid on making foci to channel my own magic like a wand. This seemed like a good test of the theory of whether I can make something that will work when I'm not channeling energy into it." He twitched a finger, surreptitiously feeling the leather, obviously way into the idea. Though I wasn't totally keen on befriending this strange old man, he had a nice cat, so he couldn't be all bad. "If it works out, I could try to make something similar for you?"

That got a genuine, toothy smile, and he demurred, "Only if it's no trouble. You're the first one in years I've seen do something practical. All the other young wizards that can enchant things… nothing but _shenanigans_ ." Thinking of these _bad kids_ brought him back to the present, so he insisted, "You'd better get back to your common room. And no night-wandering once school's in session!"

"Got it," I smiled, giving Mrs. Norris a last scritch behind the ears before collecting my stuff. "Goodnight, sir. Goodnight, missus."


	4. Stone Faced 4: Train Gangs

##  Trainspotting

I was in Professor McGonagall's office, dressed for travel, and confused. "So I floo to the station. Takes me moments. Then I ride a train for hours to get back here."

She shook her head, clearly distracted by everything else she had to do on her Sunday morning before students arrived and trying to get me out of her hair. "You're welcome to wait here, Mr. Dresden. The Hogwarts Express is a bonding experience for the students. You'll have a chance to meet everyone when they're all getting together, instead of them running into you here already in cliques."

"No, that makes sense, if everyone's doing it," I admitted, especially since I needed to meet my godmother on the train, anyway. "It's just… floos, apparitions, portkeys, brooms. Isn't there even supposed to be some space-bending magical bus? Why a train that moves at the speed of… a train?"

"Volume, Mr. Dresden. Over 250 students and all their luggage would be a substantial magical outlay to move, but trains are time-tested and  _ efficient _ ."

I moved to stand in front of her fireplace, still arguing, admittedly at this point just trying to get a rise out of my head of house, "But it's not like most of them live in London. They're  _ already  _ using magical transport to get to King's Cross…"

"Have a nice trip, Mr. Dresden. This floo will be closed soon for the school year, so this cannot be your way back. Stay out of trouble. King's Cross," she said, flinging in floo powder with one hand and shoving me into the fire with the other.

I staggered out onto a concrete platform, where a mostly cosmetic fireplace had been built into a stone wall behind me, likely in a way it could be hidden when the train wasn't traveling to this hidden platform. The big red train in question was so "efficient" it clearly hadn't been updated in at least a century, coal smoke already filling the bay. If it wasn't for magic, everyone here would probably die of carbon monoxide poisoning.

It  _ was  _ interesting to see more witches and wizards than I'd ever seen before in one place. A couple hundred students and their families made for a substantial crowd. Most were trying to pass as muggles, with varying levels of success, but those coming in through the floo like I had were an extremely eclectic bunch. And apparently familiars were allowed to just wander. Full early, I went and found a bench to sit on and people watch with the hope that I was going to get to pet  _ so many cats _ .

I was also considering whether I ought to make a break for it. I'd had to leave my staff back at the castle, but I could manage a lot with just the foci I had hidden on me. This was the first time without some kind of adult watching my every move for a month, and possibly my last chance to escape until Christmas. I'd read up on the Trace, and as long as I didn't actually use any magic, they couldn't pinpoint me. Dawlish probably knew I'd used the floo, but I could disappear in the chaos out into muggle King's Cross, hop on another train, and take my chances that they just did spot checks on tickets. But even in a best-case scenario, I wasn't sure how I'd collect the belongings I'd stashed without magic, much less get out of the country. I needed to know how to get out from under the trace, and, for that, I'd need to speak to my godmother…

"You're considering running." I didn't know how she worked out her timing, but, as usual, it was uncanny. Think of the devil, and she appears. She'd plaited her dark hair up and hidden it under a blue witch's hat, except for a waterfall of bangs hanging across her face, and had on matching robes. If she'd been human, she'd have looked like an extremely attractive woman in her thirties. If she had the lifespan of a witch, she could be twice that. She could be using glamour charms and be any age. Or she could be immortal, as she'd implied on more than one occasion.

She could just be a lying madwoman with an unhealthy fascination with me and the dark arts.

"I don't think I'd get far," I admitted, trying not to look directly at her and do this spy-style. Just two unrelated people taking a load off on the bench.

"That auror  _ is  _ a problem," she smirked. "I could get rid of him. I assume you'll tell me no just like all my previous offers. But… after Justin, maybe you've changed your mind."

"I haven't. That was an accident. I think you may have left out some of the drawbacks of that curse."

"It burns such pretty colors," she tittered. "It burns and burns. If you did it right, you get a mascot. I bet yours was a kitty."

"I didn't get a good look at it. I was too busy fending off whatever it was Justin summoned." I was digging. She rarely gave up any information that was actually useful.

"Harry. I  _ did  _ warn you to get out. I never wanted you to have to see that. You could have come with me. You still can. I take my duties to your mother seriously."

When Justin was merely abusive, I wasn't willing to take that offer, and him proving to be homicidal didn't make it that much better. This was one of our more linear conversations: usually they were much more like trying to solve a puzzle out of insane, malevolent ramblings. The first puzzle I'd solved is that she considered mind control and torture to be perfectly loving ways of raising a child. "I think I'll let this play out for a while longer, but, as always, I do appreciate that the offer remains open." I'd also worked out that it paid to be polite to the madwoman that believed my mother had made me her responsibility.

"Very well. You can reach me by the usual methods if you change your mind or need more direct assistance. In the meantime, this is what I mentioned," she hissed, passing a rolled up parchment to me. "It goes without saying: you should not be caught with a ritual that allows you to slough off the Trace. Certain parties would be very upset."

"Understood. Thank you, godmother. I  _ did  _ manage to save several of the texts you wanted, and will get them to you as soon as I have the opportunity to retrieve my cache." I was hoping reminding her of our last deal would keep her from thinking about how much further this ritual put me in her debt. In many of our conversations, she'd been absolutely  _ fixated  _ on equitable deals.

"I knew you would, Harry. You're your mother's son. You don't let surprises distract you from your objectives."

The train horn sounded, noting that it was half an hour until it would leave. Of course, with that distraction, my godmother was gone.

"Ah, I see Crabbe and Goyle," I heard a blond woman a few paces away say to her small son. "Go collect them and get a good compartment." The woman, her son, and a man with long, silver hair stood about nearby as if they owned the entire platform. From the material and embroidery on their robes, they might have. With such a posh trio nearby, no one had paid a moment's attention to my conversation. As the boy dragged his trunk off down the platform to meet his friends, the man turned and glanced my way, seemingly noting the empty seat next to me before politely looking away and whispering to his wife.

Well, maybe  _ someone  _ had paid attention. I hoped they hadn't overheard anything that would be a problem for me.

##  Railroaded

Shortly before the train was about to leave, I spotted the Weasleys, their red hair distinctive even among a couple hundred other witches and wizards. The twins and the youngest boy headed toward the rear of the train, while Percy split off to head toward the front, since he was the only one I actually knew my own age, I headed that way as well. With my longer strides, I caught up to him as he was about to climb up into one of the first train cars. "Percy," I greeted, catching his attention.

"Wha– Dresden. I mean, Harry. Hello." He looked awkward for a minute, glancing behind him at the car, realizing I might be his responsibility. As an extreme introvert, he probably wasn't looking forward to being my social connection. Somewhat lamely he explained, "I actually have to meet with the other prefects." He absently polished the shiny badge pinned to his robes, while thinking. "You should meet with Wood. He's one of our other roommates. If you find the twins, they'll be able to find him. I'll be by on rounds later."

I let the kid off easy. "Fair enough, thanks Percy. Enjoy your prefect meeting." He nodded, grateful to have been released, and leaped up the stairs into the compartment. Since it looked like the train was about to get moving, I climbed up into the next car, and started heading down the aisles, expecting the Weasleys to only be slightly harder to find on the train than they were off.

The trains I'd been on previously, in my admittedly limited experience, had been set up more like airplanes or buses, with open-air carriages of rows of seats and an aisle in the middle. Some of them might have been especially fancy, with the seats alternating back and forward so groups could face each other, maybe with a table in between. I hadn't actually been on one with this style, where the aisles ran down one window and most of each car was enclosed compartments for around six people (maybe more, if they were very friendly).

I wondered if they actually had enough cars for all the cliques. Based on the kids that already had robes on with their house colors displayed, everyone seemed to be grouping pretty heavily based on house. There didn't seem to be a lot of mixing between ages, either. With apparently an average of ten kids per house per year, that would be too many for one compartment even if everyone was comfortable squeezing in. In fact, the cars were probably  _ exactly  _ the right size to make it obvious who was extraneous to the in groups. Could school administrators even do math?

Importantly, for someone like me who had precisely zero friends but liked to affect an aloof and unconcerned air, was there space to sit if I gave up on trying to insert myself into this fraught hierarchy? There were a  _ lot  _ of reasons that Elaine and I hadn't mixed with the other kids even when we attended public schools. But this kind of thing was dramatically easier to deal with when you had at least one friend who also didn't have a clue.

By the time I had twisted myself up into a ball of anxiety about how this was a bad idea, I spotted the twin redheads in a compartment surrounding a black boy their age, peeking into a cardboard box he had on his lap. A girl their age sat across the compartment, trying not to look interested. One of the twins happened to see me stop and look curiously, suddenly changing his point of interest, "Oi! It's Dresden."

"He might have  _ killed  _ a guy," confided the second twin to the other two.

"Has aurors confronting him in the Alley and everything. It's very noir," the first embroidered the tale.

"He's in fifth year, so even if it's not true that room will hopefully have more to talk about than studies and quidditch this year," the second explained, finishing the thought.

Annoyed that they were so casually spreading rumors that I was a murderer, especially due to how close to home they hit, I decided to step in, "All exaggerations. I'm actually quite boring. I'm sure Percy's shiny prefect badge will remain the talk of the room for months."

"And he's American?" asked the girl, clearly barely sidetracked.

"He might be Canadian, Patricia," insisted the boy with the dreadlocks. "Say 'about' and 'poutine.'" Wonderful. The twins had another friend that was just like them. No wonder Percy had hidden himself up in the front with the other responsible kids. When I just smirked, not about to out my nationality for his amusement, he asked, "Want to see my spider? It's enormous."

"Does it talk?" I asked, deadpan. Everyone looked at me trying to decide if I was stupid or crazy. "The ones that tried to eat me in the Forbidden Forest a couple weeks ago talked."

That stunned them all into moments of blissful silence as they considered all the implications. Point, Harry Dresden. Hopefully that would be the rumor instead of me killing my mentor. The beautiful moment was ended when Patricia asked in an awed tone, "Are you a cowboy? You should have a hat."

"Don't really like hats," I replied instantly, out of reflex. Before they could continue grilling me, I asked, "Percy said I should find one of our other roommates, Wood, and that you two might know where he is?"

"We haven't seen him yet," one of the twins considered.

"But he might be with the girls," the other suggested.

"Katie Bell is going to be on the Quidditch team this year, so Angelina and Alicia went up the train to find her."

"You probably passed right by them."

The boy with the spider realized that I had no idea who any of those people were and explained, "Look for the two black, athletic girls talking about sports with a brown-haired white girl."

I nodded at him in thanks and headed away, hearing the twins thank their friend, "Good save, Lee. We never want to be like, 'you know, the black girls' but it's okay if you explain it. Why are you looking at us like that?"

I remembered passing a group of that description in the previous car. They did, in fact, stand out among the otherwise pasty collection of British witches and wizards. When I got back to the compartment they'd been sitting in, the door was closed and the windows were blocked by three boys who probably thought they were being quiet enough to not be heard in the aisle.

"Fresh meat this year, huh, Bell?" growled the middle boy. "Wood have you trying to fill Charlie Weasley's broom, or you going to join these two and get outplayed by me?"

"Yeah, right, Flint," one of the girls responded. "All your chaser line is good for is trying to drag things out long enough for Higgs to find the snitch. When's the last time Slytherin beat us on goals?"

"It's going to be this year," Flint countered. "Copper was a mudblood ponce, but he could take a hit. Nothing but you three little girls, now? It's going to be like getting run over by this train."

"You're certainly as slow as this train," one of the girls snarked.

"Just watch your back for bludgers, you snotty bitch," one of the other boys asserted, "be a shame for one of those pretty faces to get knocked into the pitch at 80 miles per hour. You know what 'degloving' means?" I did, and my adrenaline started to flow as I thought back to the boggart of Elaine.

"Big talk from someone that can't even hold his bat properly."

"Maybe we'll just show you right now," said Flint, leaning what appeared to be a not-inconsiderable bulk away from the window and, presumably, into the girls' faces.

I'd been content to let the girls dominate in the battle of insults, but I couldn't take the chance that this was going to go as far as Flint was implying it was about to. I flung open the cart door and yelled, "Hey assholes!"

##  The Quidditch

All three jumped and spun around, clearly not even aware that I'd been lurking behind them for a minute. "Who the hell are you?" demanded Flint. From the front, he looked like someone shaved a caveman and dressed him in modern clothes. All three of their hands were straying to pockets, and I shook my shield bracelet free of my sleeve just in case.

Flint was burly, but he was shorter than me, and I was able to get a good look at the girls who'd been backed against the side of the train behind him. I grinned at what I saw and met his eyes, "I'm the guy that yells 'Hey assholes!' to give the girls you were messing with a chance to get wands out and pointed at your backs." They glanced over their shoulders and saw I was telling the truth, and started to grab for their own wands before I interrupted with, "Uh-uh! How sure are you those 'little girls' don't know any good curses they're really motivated to use right now?"

"Imagine the fun we could have the rest of the afternoon after some body binds," one of the girls suggested.

The bullies were obviously trying to think of a comeback, so I stepped out of line of the doorway and said, "This is the part where you run off before you make it any worse."

After another moment trying to work up the courage to do or say something that didn't get them hexed, they growled and left. Once the last one had cleared the doorway and line of fire from the girls, Flint snarled back over his shoulder, "Watch your back, new kid."

I snarked after him, "You know, the last guy that said that to me hadn't just been run off by thirteen-year olds, so it had more authority. You need to work on your timing." While that probably just made it  _ more  _ likely they'd come after me at some point, I'd never been good at keeping my mouth shut. Fortunately, they kept going into the next train car. "Sorry about that, ladies," I said to the three quidditch players. "I don't like to butt in uninvited on someone else's showdown, but…"

They looked like they were coming down from their own adrenaline surge after the confrontation, and one of the older girls allowed, "No, it's appreciated. You can distract bullies for us any time you want." She suddenly realized I was wearing Gryffindor robes and asked, "Who  _ are  _ you?"

"Harry Dresden: new transfer student. I'm rooming with Percy and Wood. I haven't actually met Wood yet, but the twins said he might be sitting with you three."

"I'm Angelina Johnson, this is Alicia Spinnet, and she's Katie Bell." I nodded, trying to remember the names. "I think Oliver said he was getting a compartment toward the back of the train. We… umm… didn't want to talk quidditch strategy for all nine hours of the trip. Which we would, if we were sharing a compartment with Oliver." She realized how that sounded, and explained, "He's very nice. But it's hard to get him to talk about anything but quidditch, especially if you're on the team."

"I'll take my chances, I guess. Sad that the twins sent me in exactly the wrong direction, but I guess it worked out. See you ladies at school," I nodded, and set out.

Behind me, Alicia muttered, "That's weird. They're usually spot-on when you ask them where someone is."

I wove my way back down the train, and found the twins again in their car. A little dark-haired boy was in with them asking, "You haven't seen Trevor, have you?"

"Your toad?" asked one of the twins. "No, sorry Neville."

"No worries. He'll turn up, eventually. Gives me an excuse to meet people, at least," the boy admitted. "Speaking of which," without missing a beat, he turned to me, sized me up, and gave a little bow that somehow didn't come off  _ completely  _ pretentious, "Neville Longbottom, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"Harry Dresden," I acknowledged, still amused at how  _ tiny  _ the first years were. Since that didn't appear to be quite enough social nicety, I asked, "What house are you hoping for?"

The twins chuckled, and one explained, "If Neville doesn't get Gryffindor, his family is going to go spare."

"Not as bad as if Ron doesn't get it," Neville demurred. "I think they're half expecting Hufflepuff, though, so I have a fallback." He shrugged, "Well, needs must with more toad-assisted gladhanding. Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dresden." He nodded and continued back up the train, poking his head into the next car and asking, "Excuse me, have you seen a toad…"

"Cute kid," I said, then noted, "Girls say Wood's the other way. They didn't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours."

"Interesting," one considered.

"Usually younger kids to the back," the other explained.

"Let's go check it out," the first continued.

"I don't want to talk about quidditch for nine hours, either," the girl, Patricia, admitted. "I think I'll go find Alicia and Angelina."

"You coming, mate?" they asked Lee.

"Nine hours of quidditch or compartment of girls all to myself," their friend pretended to consider. "You have fun looking for Wood." Everyone else had been using my roommate's name normally, but for Lee it was clearly a euphemism. He and Patricia then headed out.

Heading toward the back of the train, it wasn't long before we bumped into a lady with a snack cart, leaving no room in the aisle to get by. We all had to awkwardly crush into a random compartment, muttering apologies to the group of older kids whose room we'd invaded.

The twins seemed to recognize one of them, a guy that looked a little bit like a bulldog, and the first said, "Oh, hey, Tinwhistle. We never got a response from you about that proposal we sent."

"We could be great together," said the other, trying to sweeten whatever deal they were referencing.

"I'll think about it, now get out of my car," the boy they were talking to grumbled in a Cockney accent.

We squeezed around the snack lady's cart and continued. As we walked, they felt the need to explain what I'd seen. "Tinwhistle is an amazing conjurer."

"Barely scraped by on his other OWLs, but if you need something created from nothing…"

"...he's your guy. We're hoping to get him involved in pranking this year."

"But he doesn't take us seriously yet."

"He will, though!"

Finally, they seemed to recognize Wood in one of the compartments in the final train car, sitting talking to the youngest Weasley boy, Ron. My other roommate was pretty burly for a 15-year-old, with hair that was nearly buzzcut, which was interesting with so many other wizards going for longish hair. He was using hand gestures while describing some kind of aerobatic maneuver in a Scottish accent that would put McGonagall's to shame. He caught sight of us through the window and pointed out, "Oi! Fred and George! You left my replacement keeper alone back here."

Ron puffed up at that description, and then gushed, "We were talking about how Ireland managed a shut out at the last playoffs!"

"Our brother's as nutty about quidditch as Oliver," a twin told me, sotto voice.

"If we'd known they were together, we'd have gone and sat with the girls, too," the other groaned.

"Don't you two  _ play  _ quidditch?" I asked, as we slid into the compartment and closed the door behind us.

"Sure. But we have an eclectic and varied slate of other interests," the first said, louder, trying to get the jocks to cool it.

The second took that as his cue to introduce me, "Oliver Wood, Harry Dresden. You're roommates now."

"Transfer student," I explained to Oliver's raised eyebrow.

"Fair enough," the Scotsman allowed. "Do you play quidditch?"

I shook my head, "The flying teacher. Moonshine, I think?" Everyone but Ron snickered, as I remembered, "No, Hooch. Anyway, after I took a placement test she said I wasn't allowed on a broom again without Madam Pomfrey on standby and everything within sight covered in cushioning charms."

Disappointed, Oliver said, "That's a definite no then." He turned to the twins and asked, "Do we have any possibilities for a seventh? I'd rather play Katie as chaser, but she could do seeker if we absolutely can't find anyone better…"

After what had to be two hours of quidditch talk, I finally thought I had assembled enough context clues to ask a very important question. "So the game doesn't end until the seeker catches this golden ball, and that's worth 150 points?" Off of their nods, I asked, "Won't that always decide the game unless one team is just drastically better than the other one?"

"Charms on all the balls," Oliver explained, clearly having fielded this question before. "They're designed to create a kind of runaway winner effect. The more points you get up, the more the quaffle and bludgers will help your team out. A team that's slightly better will tend to pull away dramatically, if they can keep their lead for long enough. And the snitch tries to hide until a team is close to 150 points ahead, so it becomes a last-second race to see if you can get it to keep your team from getting shut-out."

"I think our equipment is broken though," one of the twins grumbled.

"That almost never happens at school matches," the other explained.

Oliver shrugged, "We play with what we have, just like the school brooms. New gear is expensive, and a lot of the budget goes to getting a new snitch for every game. It's good practice for the professional leagues, where it does usually work properly."

He was about to launch into an even more technical explanation, when Neville showed back up, being led by a tiny girl with bushy brown hair. She asked without formality, "Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one."

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron.

"Us too," said one of the twins.

Neville just shrugged, apologetically, as the girl seemed to have noticed the distinctive Weasley hair. "Oh, are you brothers? That must be helpful. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased of course, I mean—"

Before she could get going on a sentence that might not ever finish, Neville whispered, "Breathe, Hermione." He then introduced her to the rest of the compartment. "This is Miss Hermione Granger. She's a muggleborn, but has already read all of her textbooks. She's hoping for Gryffindor too."

We introduced ourselves around the compartment, not sure what to think of the high-strung young witch, when she had a thought, "While it's far too advanced for me, of course, I had read about something called the summoning charm, and that it was taught in fourth year, and I thought that maybe if one of you already had fourth year, it might work to find Trevor?"

"Did that have any full stops?" I chuckled at the girl. I looked at Oliver and he shrugged. I looked at Neville and he shrugged. "You said his name was Trevor? How big is he?" Neville nodded and made a gesture to describe what had to be a hard toad to lose. "What do you think the chances are that he's not on the other end of the train?" He gave me the so-so hand gesture. I gave him a warning look that this was risky. We both looked at how excited Hermione was to see magic. I shrugged, focused on my intention, charged magic into the effect, and said, " _ Accio, Trevor _ !"

I felt something catch hold onto the other end of the magical probe and stuck my hand into the aisle just in case. After a few moments, Ron, curious, stuck his head out into the aisle to look, just precisely in time to get smacked in the face by a flailing, flying, four-pound frog as it completed its journey into my hand. I handed the distressed but seemingly whole familiar to Neville as Fred and George laughingly dragged Ron off the floor and back into the compartment.

"Did you just do that without a wand?" Hermione nearly shrieked, "Only I heard that wandless magic wasn't taught until NEWT level and even then it was extremely difficult to do with advanced spells, and it looked like you didn't even need do the wand gesture—"

Neville again politely tapped the girl on the arm to get her to breathe, but also seemed impressed. I shrugged, "Apparently the way I learned is a lot different than the normal Hogwarts curriculum…"

I hadn't expected my ride to Hogwarts to be crammed seven into a compartment explaining magical theory to two 11-year-olds while four other people alternately talked incessantly about quidditch and broke into the other conversation when something actually interested them.

Oliver seemed like a classic jock, only interested in maintaining good enough grades that he was in no threat of getting disqualified for sports. He did seem competent magically, and admitted he was hoping I would help him study because Percy was hard to follow.

Hermione was a tiny magical prodigy waiting to explode into the school. Everyone, particularly his brothers and roommate, planned to force Percy to mentor the awkward little girl that was so much like him in so many ways. We had to keep her from rushing to go get paper to take notes, promising that this was just a conversation, but we'd go over it again for her later.

Neville seemed to have had a pretty well-rounded elementary magical education, including a frankly impressive understanding of plants for a first year, but was hopeless when it came to things muggle. I suggested the pureblood wizards and the muggleborn witch consider a culture swap. While the boy had a pretty good polite mask, I thought he was secretly thrilled to not be alone on the train. I could relate.

Ron seemed like the opposite of Percy. Where the older brother clearly had a lot of coping strategies for the twins' antics and seethed about being picked on, the younger brother just seemed resigned to the abuse. I'd never had brothers, so I couldn't exactly decide how much I'd hate so much attention from a family member, or just appreciate being included in any way. Other than being really interested in quidditch, which he probably couldn't even play until Oliver graduated if he was sorted Gryffindor since there wouldn't be a spare position for him to fill, he seemed not to have anything that really excited him.

The twins were a lot.

It was getting fairly late in the day when the platinum-haired little boy I'd seen at the station walked down the aisle, flanked by two fat boys who might make for intimidating muscle once they finished puberty, and boldly opened the door into our compartment. "I thought my Gryffindor count was low, introducing myself down the train. I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy. This is Crabbe and Goyle."

##  Pureblood

Since this seemed to be a pureblood thing that Neville, at least, had done too, we played along and introduced ourselves to Draco Malfoy and his prepubescent goons around the compartment. He tried not to sneer at the Weasleys and mostly succeeded, and failed when he was introduced to Hermione. I wondered if he was actually trying to control his prejudice, or whether the firsties would have had a much different reception if it had just been them in the compartment rather than having several much bigger boys in with them.

"Well, I suspect that none of the three of you are expecting to be in Slytherin with me, so I'll look forward to being rivals with new Gryffindors." For a moment, the tiny aristocrat looked like he wanted to say something to me in particular, but changed his mind, nodded, and headed on his way. What a strange child. Maybe all rich purebloods were this eccentric.

"That went better than it had any right to," quipped one of the twins, when the door was closed again.

"What's up with that kid?" asked Oliver.

"His dad's Lucius Malfoy," the other twin supplied. "Former Death Eater. Bought his way out, and now owns a bunch of businesses and about half the Ministry."

"Our dad's always trying to bust him," Ron interjected, before the first twin could tag back in. He gave a smug look at his brothers for interrupting them.

"Why… why did he sneer at me like that?" asked Hermione.

There was a tacit passing of the buck around the compartment about who wanted to break to the girl genius that she was a second class citizen. Oliver and I, as the oldest, were silently daring each other to take it, when Neville stepped up, unprompted. "Did you read about the Wizarding War in any of your books?," he asked.

She thought about it for a second, "The recent one? I haven't had a chance to read about it thoroughly, yet, because our first-year history textbook is pretty high-level about the last few decades, but it was against a dark lord that nobody wants to name, right?"

We all nodded, and Neville continued, "It wasn't just a war against a dark lord. There were a lot of witches and wizards on his side. Most of them were from old wizarding families that wanted…"

It wasn't that his courage let out, but that he seemed to lack the vocabulary to sum up institutional prejudice succinctly. I barely understood it, but I tried to jump in and help, "Wizards live for a long time. There are a lot of them alive that were kids in the Victorian era. They keep to themselves. They've missed all the things science and technology have come up with in the twentieth century. They think the non-magical world has nothing to offer the magical one, and they should stay separate."

Neville nodded in thanks, and picked back up, "At some point, around the time my Gran was in school, she started to notice that the muggleborn–" he paused long enough to be sure that she knew that meant her and he didn't have to explain it, "–didn't want to start at the bottom and treat the pureblood families as their natural superiors, like they always had before. They wanted to be treated equally."

"But why wouldn't they want to treat other human beings as equal? Can't muggleborns do magic just as well as purebloods?" she asked, halfway between anger and fear.

None of us had the understanding of the world to explain it to her, but it was actually Ron that saved the day with what would turn out to be an ongoing fixation on food. "Well, it's like... you have a birthday party every year, right? With the same kids. And you each get a big slice of cake. And it used to be, if there were any leftovers you didn't want, you'd  _ maybe _ give them to the poor kids next door. But then, those kids want to be invited to the party, and they want as much cake as you're getting, not just the scraps."

The little witch turned it over in her head, and was smart enough and focused enough on fairness that she eventually figured it you. "But it's not really  _ your  _ birthday party is it? It's  _ magic's  _ birthday party, and magic invited all its friends, and you just happened to live in the house where the cake has been showing up the longest."

Everyone thought about it and, eventually, nodded that her point made sense too. I just pointed out to her, "Sadly, most wizards aren't as smart as you. They don't even  _ teach  _ philosophy at Hogwarts. Basically, we agree with you that it's stupid, but to let Neville continue the story, just take as given for now that there are some purebloods that resent muggleborns because they don't want to share."

"Right," Neville said, picking back up the thread, "There was actually a bigger war that had a lot to do with that a long time ago, but defeating Grindelwald didn't solve all the problems. So more recently, when most of our parents were still in school, a new dark lord rose up and said he was finally going to take back control of the wizarding world for the purebloods."

"It was a hard time," Oliver said. "I can remember a little at the end of it. It was scary. Even though most of the country was against the Death Eaters, in general, there weren't enough people willing to fight instead of hide, and nobody could figure out how to kill the dark lord and end it."

Neville continued again, "When they finally did beat him, some of the Death Eaters, like Malfoy's father, claimed they were mind controlled so they wouldn't go to prison. And there are still a lot of purebloods that agreed with them, but just didn't do anything illegal."

Hermione looked scared, so I stepped back in. "Hermione. Most of the purebloods you're going to meet are like Neville and the Weasleys. They don't care that you're muggleborn. But I'm not going to lie to you and say there aren't going to be assholes out there that  _ do _ care. And it sucks because most of them are rich and important. At least one of those racist jerks is an auror that's trying to lock me up for something I'm not guilty of, and I bet he wouldn't be working so hard if I was a pureblood instead of a half-blood." I didn't think I'd made her feel much better, so I tried hard not to ruin this little girl's greatest day ever, "Buy you know what?"

"What?"

"You're going to have to put up with some mean people. And it's going to suck. But you're still one of the rare people in the world: you have magic. It's worth it."

That seemed to allay some of her fears, and she nodded, thinking it over. Finally, she smiled, as if thinking about how much she loved magic already. After a minute she asked, "How  _ did  _ they kill the dark lord?  _ Hogwarts: a History _ rather glossed over it."

I wasn't really sure either, since I'd been a six-year-old and in America at the time, but Oliver explained, "For some reason, he decided to go after Lily Potter and her family. She was muggleborn, like you, and they said she was the greatest witch of her generation. He killed them all: Lily, her husband, and her baby son. But they nearly defeated him in the battle, and he was gravely wounded. When he retreated to his base, he called his potions master, Severus Snape, to heal him.

"Severus Snape had one good quality. Lily Potter was his childhood friend, and he loved her. Snape had begged the dark lord not to kill her, but he'd done it anyway. Instead of healing potions, Snape brought his most dangerous elixirs, and blew up the entire house, with both of them and several other Death Eaters in it."


	5. Stone Faced 5: Day One

##  Sorting

The rest of the trip went uneventfully, and we all disembarked at the train station outside the castle as the sun was setting. Hagrid called out for the first years, so the tiniest three of our travel buddies hurried off to follow him. Apparently, first years rode in boats over the lake to get a really impressive first view of the castle. Everyone else rode in carriages, and when we saw them, hitched to dozens of fanged, bat-winged, black horses, I declared, "Huh. Hogwarts is 'effin metal."

"What?" one of the twins asked.

I was about to explain what "metal" meant, but then it hit me that these were thestrals, and they were invisible to anyone that hadn't seen death up close. Most of these students were probably blissfully unaware of the beasts, and thought the carriages were magically powered without horses. I'd been able to see them the first time Justin took us on a field trip, but I remembered that Elaine couldn't see them, and was freaked out when she touched one. She hadn't had a front-row seat to being orphaned like I had. "Nevermind," I demurred.

Fortunately for my anxiety, it was four to a cart and the rest of my compartment-mates didn't feel the urge to run off, particularly once they saw Lee and the rest of the quidditch team in their own cart, so I had people to ride up to the castle with.

We got into the great hall ahead of the firsties. I'd taken a few meals here over the last month, though it mostly seemed easier for food to get sent up to the Gryffindor common room for me. The floating candles and golden plates were definitely a festive touch over the mostly-bare room of the summer. Also, a couple-hundred students filing in to sit at the four long tables were many times the previous maximum I'd seen in here. It was amazing how filling up a large room could make it feel even larger.

Given how there wasn't any food set out, but the sorting hat was prominently on a central stool, I guessed, "We don't eat until all 40 of the new kids are sorted, do we?"

"No, but it's usually pretty fast," Oliver answered.

"Good. They didn't serve anything to eat on the train except sugar. Do they want everyone to stuff themselves and then immediately crash out after dinner?" The twins suddenly realized that was probably true, and looked betrayed.

I wasn't exactly prepared for the hat to sing a song about the houses, but then the kids began to file in. Our table got a handful of students, including one excitable dark-haired boy with a thick Irish accent whose name I thought Dumbledore had mentioned to me previously. Hermione practically flew up to the stool and was almost instantly sorted to our table to great applause. Shortly after that, Neville calmly walked up to the stool and the hat took a bit longer than it had for Hermione, but still sent him our way. Shortly after, surprising no one, Malfoy went to Slytherin.

My stomach really started to grumble down the back half of the alphabet, and I didn't recognize anything about the few other kids that came our way before it was down to Ron and one other boy. Ron was clearly relieved when he was instantly sorted into Gryffindor. Once the last kid got sent to Slytherin, this hunger-intensifying procedure was finally over. While most of the new first years had grouped themselves into the end of the table, Oliver and the twins had made certain there was a spot for Hermione to sit next to Percy, and Ron had boldly shoved his brothers apart to get a spot. We'd probably have made room for Neville, too, but he seemed interested in making connections to his year-mates rather than spending more time with the older kids.

Dumbledore stood after the hat was removed and there was relative silence. He made a weird dad joke about a "few words" that probably had everyone thinking he was crazy rather than just not as funny as he thought he was. But since it led to no additional time delay before the food materialized, I was willing to spot him his eccentricities.

The food was, indeed, worth waiting nine hours for, but I almost choked taking a drink of what I thought was orange juice. "What the hell is that?" I coughed. Hermione tried the juice and got a similar look of confusion on her face.

"Pumpkin juice," Percy explained. "They don't have it in the muggle world for some reason, but it's good for you. It has all the vitamins growing teenagers need."

"I'm… suspicious of that statement," I said, cautiously smelling and then re-tasting the concoction that was like someone pulped an under-sweetened pumpkin pie. "Is this just for the feast, or…"

"Every meal, mate. Learn to love it," Oliver grinned.

They'd mostly been serving me water over the summer, and I finally spotted a jug of it that I could use to replace this terrifying concoction. It was, however, becoming abundantly clear that I'd have to solve the problem of the total lack of Coke sooner rather than later. I wondered, if I got a case of it, would the elves keep it in the kitchens and send it up for me.

Hermione hurried to finish eating, even managing to choke down the pumpkin juice, before she launched into all the new magical theory and class syllabus questions she'd thought up in the half hour since we'd separated on the train platform. Everyone made sure Percy was on the hook for answering them, and he looked vaguely persecuted for the first question before realizing that he actually liked having another information sponge to share with. The rest of the quidditch team had sat next to the twins and Oliver, so that chunk of the table turned to more sports talk. Percy's fellow prefect, a dark-haired girl who introduced herself as Alexis Marie, asked to swap seats with me so she could get in on that discussion.

That finally gave me a minute to meet my other roommates, Chris Horton and Toby Lennox. Chris was a member of a wizarding family that specialized in broom manufacture and quidditch, and had disappointed Oliver in particular for not being particularly good on a broom. Toby was an Irish muggleborn who was considering whether he'd continue onto his NEWTs or go back to muggle education after he got his OWLs this year. Both seemed like middling students more interested in hanging out with each other, and their girlfriends.

Also, there were ghosts hanging out, but they seemed to be house mascots and nobody minded, so I just ignored it.

Finally, once everyone seemed to be more or less finished, Dumbledore gave a more substantial speech. The Forbidden Forest was, of course, forbidden, though he made a particular point of implying the Weasley twins were known offenders. I felt bad for Filch, as there was basically no chance of anyone following through on his desire to keep magic out of the hallways. I wondered if anyone actually cared about the quidditch trials; the houses seemed to be pretty set on who they wanted as it was.

The headmaster's pronouncement about avoiding the very painful death on the third floor saw a ripple of confusion pass through the hall. "That is strange," Percy frowned, "I thought he might have told us prefects his reasoning, at least."

"McGonagall mentioned to me that it was out of bounds when I got here a few weeks ago," I volunteered, "but she didn't say anything about a very painful death. I've seen Hagrid going that way a few times. One time he had a whole dead deer with him."

Percy considered and suggested, "Could be a creature they imported for Care of Magical Creatures or Defense and want to keep away from the rest of the forest." That seemed reasonable to me and everyone else in earshot, or at least no one had a chance to provide a counter argument before Dumbledore launched into a completely tuneless joke of a school song. I couldn't wait to be an old, eccentric wizard so I could amuse myself at everyone else's expense like Dumbledore did.

After that, it was on to the house tower. I was tagging along with Percy and Alexis as they led the first years, when a collection of walking sticks floated around a corner, and then started flying individually at Percy. He narrowly dodged one, groaning "Peeves!" I wondered why he wasn't shielding, before remembering that most wizards were terrible at making barriers that could repel physical objects. I shook my shield bracelet out of the sleeve of my robe and put up a barrier between the bizarre arsenal and the students. As the sticks bounced harmlessly off my shield, Percy gave me a nod, impressed, and yelled, "Peeves! Show yourself!"

Nothing seemed to happen until several canes had bounced off my shield and then a tiny, translucent man with dark eyes appeared, holding the sticks. "No fun!" he shouted, "Wizard shields are for spells, not for sticks! Zoom!" He rushed at my shield and it caught the sticks with a thrum, but allowed him to pass through. The wood clattered to the ground while he tumbled through the air over everyone, making raspberries all the way before flying around a corner.

I dropped my shield, a little winded by handling so many impacts, but tried not to let it show. "You want to watch out for Peeves," Percy explained to everyone. "He will not listen to any of the prefects, or any of the other ghosts except the Bloody Baron. Lindquist, a third year over in Ravenclaw, can also manage him somehow." We walked up a few more flights of stairs to the portrait of the woman in the pink silk dress, and said, "Here we are. The new password is Caput Draconis."

As everyone filed into Gryffindor tower and off to bed, I suddenly realized that this day wasn't really an aberration. I'd be sharing the castle with hundreds of students for the next several months. I didn't really internalize it until the bedroom I'd had all to myself for a month was full of near-strangers.

This was going to be a hell of an adjustment.

##  Semantics

They certainly didn't care much for adjustment time at Hogwarts, so before I really even had a chance to meet too many people in my house, we were in bed and then having to get up early for classes. The nightmares had at least woken me up early enough to not have to fight four other guys for a shower. But after the summer, I wasn't really prepared to go to class first thing in the morning.

Professor Babbling seemed nice. She was a thin Persian woman who nonetheless had one of the rural English accents that I couldn't place. She came off like an academic, which may have been why nearly half the small class was made of Ravenclaws. Two or three members of each of the rest of the houses rounded out the baker's dozen of students. For Gryffindor it was me, Percy, and a Chinese girl I hadn't met yet.

The professor had spent the first part of the class doing a brief review, which was a bit redundant since I'd heard much the same thing at my placement test. It probably helped the others who may not have done much work over the summer. Toward the end of the review, Professor Babbling pulled back up to a higher level and asked, "Why do we use  _ ancient  _ runes for inscribing magic?" A Ravenclaw girl with long, curly blond hair and a shiny prefect's badge raised her hand, and the professor called on her. "Ms. Clearwater?"

"Because their meaning is no longer changing. They have a fixed meaning for magical purposes," answered the prefect.

That got a sharp, small nod from Percy, but apparently I gave a look because the professor asked, "Do you disagree, Mr. Dresden?"

"Well it's not wrong…" I started, but since everyone was staring at me now, I couldn't bring myself to back down from pontificating. "But I think it has to do more with traditional education. They still only have the meaning the wizard ascribes to them. You use ancient runes because they're more likely to have everyone agree on the meaning."

"You have something to add, Mr. Weasley?" the professor suggested, clearly seeing that Percy was frowning at me.

"Harry just said what Penelope said, only less succinctly," explained the redhead, with a nod to the other prefect.

Babbling gave me a look that implicitly challenged me to defend my position. She was either a really good teacher or an unrepentant instigator. I shrugged, cut off a strip of parchment, and wrote out a series of runes. "What does this spell do?" I asked Percy and Penelope.

"That's a protection rune, followed by a rune of anticipation, and then fire," considered the blond.

"That's almost always used as a flame trap ward," Percy concurred. "We learned something similar in third year."

"What if I told you it was placed by a German hill wizard who never went to school and taught himself runes from nearby historical structures?" I added.

They both paused, looked at each other, and Penelope said, "Still a flame ward?" Percy concurred.

"But he doesn't know the correspondences of the symbols. He just knows the sounds they make. And he's tried to write 'angst' the best he can with the runes he knows. To him, this is a fear spell," I explained.

"It can't be a fear spell!" Percy snapped. "None of those runes have a correspondence to fear."

I tried to explain it in a way that wasn't smug, I really did. "Not for you. Because you've been taught their generally accepted meanings. But they don't  _ actually  _ mean anything. They're just anchors for you to concentrate your intentions into your enchantment. The more certain you are of what they mean, the less concentration it takes to envision the effect you want and lay it into the material you're working on." I shrugged, "I bet powerful wizards with good concentration, like Dumbledore, can enchant items without having to lay runes on them to help their concentration, and could even enchant an item counter to what the runes said, just to confuse people."

Penelope looked upset, she turned to the professor looking for her to contradict me, but Babbling just allowed, "Mr. Dresden is correct."

"Then why are we bothering to learn any of these, Professor?" asked the blond prefect. "I could have apparently been making up squiggles and using those to cast, as long as I believed in them hard enough."

The professor took pity on me and actually taught her own class for a second. "Because what Mr. Dresden said originally was correct: everyone basically agreed. His example of the uneducated wizard is so rare, I've never seen anything like it. In practice, you and Mr. Weasley would have been correct, though you  _ should  _ have also considered whether the runes made a recognizable word as a second layer of meaning."

"Then why does it matter, if we were right?" Percy complained.

"Because, Mr. Weasley, you can't innovate without a deeper understanding. Wizards and witches can go a long way with just the standard meanings of the runes. But they only describe the most common concepts. There are spells you might want to enchant that, should you only have the traditional understanding, you cannot find a way to convey in runes. You'll have to take a step into improvisation to create them, and so you need to know that's possible." She looked around and saw that everyone seemed to be getting it. "Five points to Gryffindor and three points to Ravenclaw for the edifying discussion."

Penelope was looking at me in some combination of consideration and shock, while Percy's neck appeared almost as red as his hair. I didn't think earning points was going to go far toward mollifying him.

Sure enough, as our next class was a double-length potions lesson with the Slytherins, Percy made no secret of sitting as far from me as he could. He grabbed Alexis, the girl's prefect, at the door as his partner and clearly whispering complaints. That seemed to suit Oliver fine, who waved to me to sit next to him. "Cai said you showed up Percy in runes. You as good in potions?" the quidditch captain muttered to me.

"I hope so. You as good at stopping Flint from throwing stuff into our cauldron as you are at stopping… waffles?" I replied, glancing at the trollish Slytherin glaring at us from a nearby table.

"Quaffles," Oliver corrected, "and, yes. You take point on making sure our potions turn out and I'll play defense against the snakes?"

"Sounds good to me," I agreed, as Professor Belby swept into the room.

The professor was an interesting guy, looking something like if Hamlet were put on by 70s gutter punks. His outfits were inevitably ostentatious velvet frock coats with tight sleeves and delicate runic embroidery. Whatever enchantments he had put on his expensive clothes to keep them from being ruined by potion fumes did not carry to his person, and his mid-length graying black hair was inevitably greased up in some strange spiky fashion. He seemed to have an unstoppable nervous tic of running his fingers through his hair, and the potion residue did the rest.

Also, his first name was Damocles, and he was a direct descendant of the guy that had invented the statute that Dawlish was using on me, which didn't make me feel great.

He sat behind his desk and steepled his fingers, proclaiming, "Fifth year. OWL year. You'll have a lot of homework. You'll need to prepare. The curriculum suggests we start with Draught of Peace so you can self-medicate for anxiety. I don't like it. See Madam Pomfrey if you need to be medicated. Instead, we're starting with a review of Strengthening Solution. It's much more useful. Instructions on the board. Who can tell me why the stirring pattern is indicated?"

Percy's hand shot in the air, anxious to show me up. This was going to be a long day…

##  Unforgivable

"You're fighting with Percy?" one of the twins asked, sitting down next to Oliver and across from me at the lunch table. I decided to assume the first one to begin a new conversation was Fred.

"How'd you pull that off?" asked George, sitting down next to me and across from his brother. "He's usually pretty afraid of confrontation."

"Well, I mean Percy's 'fighting' by sitting across the room and glaring, so pretty non-confrontational," elaborated Oliver.

"Why is this news?" I asked, trying to make a sandwich. "And how did you find out so quickly?"

"Sources," said Fred, as if that explained everything.

I raised an eyebrow at Oliver and he shook his head. So I just stared at George until he added, "The Slytherin girls in your Runes class must have told their common room after class. The Slytherin guys on the quidditch team hassled us about it on the way to lunch."

"Why would the quidditch team bother you about me and Percy having a disagreement?" I asked, genuinely confused.

Both shrugged, and Fred said, "Trying to sow discord among our house, maybe?"

George considered, "Maybe they think we'll try to defend our brother and make it easier for them to get back at you."

"But he was probably being a ponce," Fred allowed, cheerfully.

"So what did he do?" George asked.

"Got mad at me for answering the professor's question more thoroughly than he and his friend had, basically," I explained, then, after a second, admitted, "I guess I did kind of trick him into getting the wrong answer on a thought experiment in front of the class."

"That would definitely do it," Oliver nodded. "Our Percy doesn't like to be wrong."

"Then he should probably learn more about the material than what's written in the textbook," I groused.

"Oooh!" Fred grinned. "Percy the Ponce is no longer the smartest Gryffindor in his year."

"His quest to be the swotty Weasley has ended before it had even begun," mock-lamented George.

"What did Percy do now?" asked Ron, just arriving.

Listening to the three younger Weasleys spend the rest of lunch tearing down their brother wasn't as vindicating as I'd expected. Oliver was happy to chime in from time to time, mostly about pretty minor issues with him being an aloof roommate for several years. While a lot of their complaints were exaggerations, the undercurrent was mostly that Percy had a hard time standing out in a family with seven children, and that they'd teased and pranked him mercilessly for it for a decade.

I kept half an eye on Percy at the other end of the table, where I thought I saw him periodically sneak glances our way. He didn't really look mad at me, as much as he looked sad.

It was still bugging me all throughout history class after lunch, which was just as boring as I expected, but the rest of the afternoon was double-length defense class, and Quirrell threw another distracting curve at me first thing.

"Since it's OWL year, and I am aware your d-d-defense instruction has been… uneven, we will c-c-concentrate this year on areas of the exams that have b-been missed p-previously. P-P-Perhaps most significant: c-c-curses." The purple-turbaned professor gazed across the class of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs and asked, "Who knows the three most n-notorious of such spells, the Unforgivables?"

As expected in a class of kids that were old enough at the end of the war to have foggy memories of it, we didn't have much difficulty filling the board with the imperius, cruciatus, and killing curses. They were dutifully added to the top of the chalkboard. Thankfully, demonstrations were not forthcoming.

"Who knows some other c-c-curses that are  _ n-not _ Unforgivable?" the professor asked, clearly going somewhere with this.

Perhaps a bit more slowly in a class of people not inclined to use darker spells, the lower part of the board filled up with curses. I didn't add anything, because I didn't trust where Quirrell was going with this, or how he looked at me.

"This is a large list," Quirrell gestured at the board. "C-C-Can anyone t-tell me… why are these three Unforgivable?"

Perhaps still stinging from this morning, Percy didn't raise his hand even though he clearly thought he knew the answer. Finally, Rose Wax, one of the girls in my house, raised her hand and, after Quirrell pointed at her, answered, "Because they carry an automatic sentence to Azkaban if you're caught using them, while the others involve a trial."

"That statement is  _ t-true _ ," Quirrell allowed, "b-b-but not what I was asking for. Why d-do these three spells c-c-carry such an automatic sentence? What makes them d-d-different from, say, the b-body b-bind c-c-curse?"

The class thought for a moment, and a Hufflepuff boy ventured, "They don't have any purpose other than to hurt or kill the target, while the others can be used for legitimate purposes?"

Quirrell pointed at another curse on the board, "What is, then, the legitimate p-purpose of the entrail-expelling c-c-curse?"

A Hufflepuff girl ventured, "Has that one just not been added to the law yet?"

"Mr. Weasley," called the professor, "when was the entrail-expelling c-curse c-created?"

The professor was obviously familiar with Percy, because, on the spot, he explained in great detail that, "It was created by Urquhart Rackharrow, who lived in the 1600s. So it had been in use for up to a century before the Unforgivables were classified that way in 1717."

"That is, of c-course, c-c-correct. Three p-points t-to G-G-Gryffindor. Mr. D-D-Dresden, I suspect you have an answer," the jerk sprung the trap on me.

I sighed and answered, "You can't stop them with a shield."

"Indeed, thank you Mr. D-Dresden. Another three p-points t-to G-Gryffindor," Quirrell acknowledged, as he wrote "Can't Shield" on the board under the three curses. "Mr. D-Dresden p-presents an interesting opportunity for our c-class. You have, p-p-perhaps, noticed that he d-doesn't c-c-carry a wand?" I'd been carrying my newly-carved oak staff to classes all day, so it was probably pretty common knowledge by now. "Would you c-care t-to explain your style, in a historical c-context?"

My urge to make things harder for whatever Quirrell was planning to surprise me with wound up at odds with my love of talking about my magic, so I gave in and explained, "Most historical wizards probably used a staff rather than a wand, with other focus items to cast any spells that wouldn't work with the staff. Wand only became popular in the last few hundred years. It's similar to how rapiers replaced swords and armor."

"Extremely similar," acknowledged Quirrell. "As I t-t-taught some of you in muggle studies, as muggles b-became more c-c-cosmopolitan, they switched t-to weapons easier t-to c-c-carry in a city. Similarly, with the lead up t-to the statute of secrecy, wizards and witches needed a versatile focus that would be easy t-to hide from muggles. You have a concern, Mr. Weasley?"

Surprised to be called out for the expression he was making, Percy explained, "I thought the muggles stopped using armor not because it was impolite in a city, but because it was no longer very effective against crossbows and firearms."

"Five p-p-points t-to G-G-Gryffindor!" Quirrell said, giving the closest thing to a smile of appreciation I'd seen from him. "I thought we'd have to c-come t-to that the long way around. He's c-c-correct. Just as firearms made a knight's armor obsolete, the Unforgivable c-c-curses drove wizards t-to styles that emphasized mobility, so they c-could d-dodge these spells instead of t-t-trying t-to shield against them.

"And, just as the muggles are looking to b-b-ban firearms, wizards b-banned these c-c-curses. The muggles are only about three centuries b-b-behind us."

Oliver raised a hand and was acknowledged, asking, "But if we banned the Unforgivables, why don't more people use Harry's style?"

Quirrell shrugged, "The exact reasons may be lost t-to history, but likely b-b-because the p-process had already started. Wands  _ are  _ easier t-to hide and more c-c-convenient to carry. They b-b-became easier t-to make as woodworking t-t-technology and spells improved. B-But… p-p-perhaps Mr. D-D-Dresden would like to d-d-demonstrate for us why his style still has holdouts?"

There it went. He'd put me front and center, so I couldn't refuse without looking like a coward. "You want me to put up a shield and see how strong it is?" I asked?

"Indeed, b-b-but we'll also need a c-c-control. Who has a strong shield charm?" The boy with the Hufflepuff prefect badge reluctantly raised a hand, after all his classmates clearly wanted him to get credit for it. "Mr. Flinton, yes? Excellent. Let's have the three other p-p-prefects on offense." He positioned a suddenly worried Flinton on one side of the front of the classroom, and Percy, Alexis, and the girl Hufflepuff prefect on the other side. "Now, Mr. Flinton will shield, and you three will use strong stunners. Stop as soon as his shield falls. Ready? B-B-Begin!"

Flinton's  _ protego  _ looked solid, but it started to flicker after the first barrage of three shouts of " _ stupefy _ " and fell to the second, with Percy's punching through. Flinton narrowly dodged out of the way.

"An excellent showing. Three p-p-points t-to Hufflepuff. Mr. Dresden, if you'd replace Mr. Flinton?" I grimaced and slouched to the front of the room as the clearly winded prefect sat back down. "Same rules. B-B-Begin!"

I shook my shield bracelet out of the sleeve of my robe and focused my will on generating a  _ protego  _ with it. I could get it to produce more versatile shields, but the basic one would be more efficient. I noticed most of the class look shocked both at how I was producing it and how it was larger than Flinton's, providing total coverage from the ground to above my head.

The other three prefects started flinging stunners, and they splashed onto my shield without much issue. After the first salvo, I made some subtle adjustments to the shape of my shield so more of the energy got diverted into the ground. By the third salvo, I could tell that Percy, in particular, was putting a lot of power into his stunners, trying to break through. I was definitely getting tired, but I was too stubborn to tap out before I passed out. I was curious whether I could keep this up longer than they could.

After the sixth salvo, when it was clear just how much longer I'd be able to shield than Flinton, Quirrell suggested, "Mr. D-D-Dresden. Show them why you're using the b-bracelet and not your staff."

I smirked, finally feeling like the guy was letting me in on the joke, and flung my own stunner around the edge of my shield without dropping it. It wasn't very powerful, because that's not what my staff was optimized for, and my aim was off due to having to go around my own shield, but I was pleased that Alexis had to break off her own next stunner to shield against mine.

"Stop!" the professor insisted. "That is an excellent d-demonstration." The three stopped firing, and I lowered my shield with a tired sigh a moment later. "As you can see, t-to c-c-continue the analogy, it's the difference b-between attacking another unarmored swordfighter and attacking a knight in p-plate armor and a shield.

"You may wonder then, why we don't all learn to fight this way? If the Unforgivables are no longer a factor, and focus-making has evolved like his b-b-bracelet so it c-c-can b-be easily c-carried and c-concealed, why d-do we t-teach you t-to shield with a wand?" The professor looked around for an answer as I ambled back to my seat, only to hear him answer his own question. "B-because wands are  _ fast _ .  _ Stupefy! _ "

I finally realized where the real trap was too late, and my shield did, indeed, take a little longer to put up than a wanded charm. I only had it half raised before the professor's stunner knocked me out.

This was only my second run-in with the guy and I was already starting to hate him.

##  Swots

Fortunately, Oliver was as good at catching unconscious bodies as he was quaffles, so I didn't split my head open collapsing against a desk. Quickly revived, I didn't have to be the guinea pig for the rest of the lesson as Quirrell expanded on the functions and defenses against various other curses. But I sometimes caught glances from him as if he was thinking about what torture to inflict on me next. What had I  _ done  _ to this guy?

While defense class was a nice distraction, I returned to my earlier conundrum when I overheard Ron Weasley complaining to the twins on the way into dinner, pantomiming an exaggerated raised hand gesture, "...trying to grab something off the ceiling. Was  _ Percy  _ that bad when he was a first year?"

I'd never had siblings, and in a lot of ways I envied the support network that the Weasley boys had. But I could see it from Percy's point of view as well. They seemed to be a family that loved sports, adventures, and pranks. If you were someone who  _ didn't _ , there was probably no escape at home. I'd only had to share the tower with a bunch of Gryffindors for one night so far, and I was already planning places in the castle I could hide to be by myself. What if you were just in a family house, putting up with that for  _ years  _ with nowhere to go?

After dinner, I'd made a point of organizing my trunk in our bedroom, hoping to catch Percy in private. Fortunately, he stopped by, probably planning to grab some things and run to the library. He eyed me warily as he went to get books from his own trunk. "Those were some good stunners today," I told him, as nonchalantly as I could manage. "I don't think I could have kept my shield up much longer."

He considered a moment, kneeling and faced away from me as he sorted, then just said, "It was a team effort. The girls are strong casters, as well."

"Probably," I nodded, "but I could definitely tell the difference when yours hit."

"And yet," he grumbled, "your shield held."

"Like the professor said, it's just a question of styles," I explained. "If you gave me a wand, I wouldn't be able to even do as good a job as that Hufflepuff prefect did. This bracelet is purpose-built for shields, and so it's more effective than a wand, which can cast anything." I considered for a moment, "And I had to make it myself. Which gave me more insight into how enchantment works than looks like you would have covered yet in the Hogwarts curriculum."

He stood up again, books forgotten, and regarded me, "I wager you will have a similar story for how you just happen to get an O in each of your OWLs, while befriending the quidditch team, out-dueling a few seventh-years, and casually having time to tutor the first-years."

"Definitely not astronomy and history," I demurred, "they wanted to put me in with the first-years on both of those."

"I just do not understand you, Harry," Percy whined, "You have aurors claiming that you are a murderer, but the headmaster and our head of house bending over backwards to help you fit in. You seem to be muggleborn, yet somehow know more about runes and defense than anyone but the professors." He clenched his fist, "And somehow… somehow… when you go off on a rant about how magic works that has the professor thanking you for educating the class, everyone thinks that makes you  _ cool _ ."

"I'm going to come back to how you seem to think 'muggleborn' means that I should be incompetent," I said, having nearly interrupted him there, "but can I make an observation? I'm not trying to be cool. I'm honestly barely holding myself together, so I don't have time to worry about what other people think about me. I'm just happy your brothers haven't yet gotten everyone thinking I'm a murderer.

"What I do care about is being nice to people. I'm basically trapped in this castle until I turn 17, and maybe longer if Dawlish decides to keep riding me. I have to make enough friends to not go crazy with people hating me. I mean, I can't even begin to understand quidditch, but I listen politely because that's what Oliver and your brothers want to talk about. Maybe they'll decide they hate me next week. What I can't figure out is why  _ you  _ seem so happy with them not liking you."

Percy looked like he wanted to fight about it, then flung himself petulantly onto his bed, sitting to face me as he answered, "You think I never tried to make people like me? I spent  _ years  _ helping Oliver study, but it took a day for you to be his favorite lab partner. I was excited to get to be a prefect, sure, because it was recognition, but also so I could help the lower-years. Ron already has them ignoring me."

"I mean, I don't want to pretend I'm an expert or anything, since I'm pretty much just a giant magical nerd," I admitted, "but… have you tried to make friends with anyone non-academically? I mean, I  _ also _ don't get why they're so excited about sports instead of literally rewriting the known laws of reality with a flick of their wrists. But for some reason they really want to talk about quidditch, and don't mind if you just let them talk about quidditch."

"I just cannot bring myself to pretend to care," he slumped down on his bed. "I get the thrill of flying. I find exploding snap and gobstones momentarily amusing. I can certainly appreciate music as a distraction or background noise. But when people only want to spend time doing those things in the best years we have to become experts at, as you say, rewriting the laws of reality… it just seems so…"

"Childish?" He nodded, granting me the point. "Percy, I get it. I had to grow up really early, for reasons I wouldn't wish on anyone else, and, if I'm being honest, I can be pretty childish sometimes too. I can't presume too much about your parents or older brothers, but I bet even if they were helping, you had to grow up fast just to counterbalance the twins…"

"Ron and Ginny are quite immune to reason and sense as well, on most days," he added.

"They're at least still pre-teens. Hopefully they'll grow out of it. But, my point being, you're all still young. It's okay to just be a kid sometimes. What are you afraid is going to happen if you take a break, maybe aren't best in the class at something, and find a hobby that's just something you do for fun?"

He sighed, and thought for a moment, then said, "Forgive me for saying, 'you would never understand,' when I expect that you would love to have more family, but… you would never understand. My eldest brother is a world-traveling curse breaker. He is in Egypt, exploring old tombs. The next brother just graduated and is off in Romania working at a dragon sanctuary. While here, both of them were excellent students, and Charles was the greatest seeker the quidditch team had in years.

"Then there are the twins. They are toweringly childish and annoying, but they are secretly brilliant enchanters, good at sports, and everyone seems to love them. Finally, Ginny is the first Weasley daughter in generations, the girl my parents were willing to have son after son to try to get, then stopped having children."

"And you're stuck in the middle of all that, with no way to stand out," I said. He nodded. "What about Ron?"

"I… am actually really worried about our Ronald," Percy admitted. "He has little hope of playing quidditch until Oliver graduates, and that seems to be all he cares about. While he is surprisingly brilliant at chess, that never seems to inform any of his other choices. I worry he will be miserable here, eventually."

By this point, I'd also leaned back on my bed, and after the initial confrontational stance we were having the kind of relaxed roommates conversation I'd sometimes had with Elaine. I thought about it, and then asked, "What do you want to do with your life, Percy?"

"Assuming I can achieve the requisite scores on my OWLs and then on my NEWTs, I should be able to enter the Ministry at a middle grade and then rise through the ranks over several years."

"Law enforcement? Healer? Diplomat?" I asked.

"Whichever department has an opening, I suppose. My father thinks that there might be an opening in the Department of International Magical Cooperation soon, where I could take charge of updating the British standards and regulations to the European level. We really do allow shoddy craftsmanship on things like cauldrons…"

I was speechless long enough to let him ramble on to even more mind-numbing fixation on bureaucracy. Finally, I had to interrupt him. "Maybe you're passionate about this and, if so, tell me to shut the hell up, but… are you really going to become one of the greatest wizards this school has produced this generation and then act like you're excited to work as an undersecretary in an office?"

"Well, it is quite a secure position. For all that we had to watch our spending, my father is relatively low level within the Ministry and is able to support a family with seven children on his salary alone. And once you begin to rise in the hierarchy, absent major scandals you have a guaranteed paycheck for life…"

"You're being too adult about things again, man," I insisted. "Thought experiment time. Through some magical accident in seventh-year charms class, right after you get all Os in your NEWTs, you get thrown into a parallel Earth with no way back. Your family is safe but you'll never see them again and they'll never know what happened to you. The only asset you have is your brain and your wand, with nobody having any expectations of you one way or the other. What do you want to do with your life?"

"Well… I mean, allowing that admittedly nigh-impossible scenario for the purposes of this thought experiment, the very existence of a parallel universe reachable by magic would seem to call into question several of the known magical laws, particularly elements of Gamp's laws. Assuming I could work in a laboratory with sufficient funding, just trying to unravel what happened to me would be a feat worthy of a lifetime."

I clapped, and said, "Congratulations. That is a real, honest answer. Doesn't the Ministry have a department designed to do exactly that kind of thing? Why aren't you angling to work there?"

"The Department of Mysteries does not publish their guidelines for admittance, so it has always seemed safer to me to pursue a more opportunistic strategy as it comes to job placement," he admitted.

"Are you making stuff?" I asked, remembering that he hadn't seemed to understand why I'd want extra potion supplies for my own creations. "Are you doing any independent research projects? Are you investigating any of the existing magical theories and trying to see if you can open up new possibilities?"

"With what time?" he asked, rhetorically. "I have three electives as classes and am independently studying the other two, prefect duties, and study for OWL year. I honestly worry if I can find time to get enough sleep."

I scoffed, "You've certainly planned out your life for a nervous breakdown and an early grave. I assume you're also in arithmancy. What's the other elective you're going to class for?"

"Muggle studies," he admitted, with a scowl.

"That look means you know it's worthless. If you really want the OWL, I'll teach you. We can do field trips. You'll learn more in five minutes walking around London than in a month of the class. Plus Divination independent study  _ can't _ be that much of your time. And I'll help you study for OWLs, because I probably need you to help me anyway."

"Why are you so interested in my career and emotional well being, Harry?"

I had to think about it for a second. Why  _ was  _ I so interested? I'd come in here just trying to defuse whatever he was mad at me about. Was it that I suddenly saw someone that would be so easy for me to save from his own dumb choices? Maybe it was that I'd spent one day here and already realized that, in a school full of people that could do  _ freaking magic _ , the awesome power of wizardry was treated as just another boring school subject to "skive off" of to go play sports, and Percy was one of the few that took it seriously. Maybe I did feel a little guilty for showing up and stealing what little thunder the guy had in our first class together. What I said was, "I don't know, really, man. It's just, I think you have it in you to be a magical  _ badass _ , and I don't like that your brothers don't even see it and you're going to squander it all to be a bureaucrat."

He looked at me for a few seconds, as if to figure out if I was messing with him. But he eventually said, "Fair enough. I will certainly consider it." He was quiet for a few more seconds. "I  _ am  _ still angry at you for making me look stupid in front of Penelope."

Oh. Suddenly it all made sense. He was trying to show off for the  _ girl _ . I grinned, "Percy, this is great! Aren't Ravenclaws supposed to be the genius researchers around here? Imagine how much you'll be able to show off for her when you let her in on your thrilling extracurricular research project…"


	6. Stone Faced 6: Match Maker

##  Matchmaker

It was good that I learned about Percy's crush, because Tuesday worked out to us spending a ton of time in classes with her. Charms and transfiguration in the morning both happened to be the classes Gryffindor shared with Ravenclaw, arithmancy after lunch, and then the Gryffindors in arithmancy missed the normal history class that was up against arithmancy, so sat it with Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. The only class of the day where we  _ wouldn't  _ see Penelope was mid-afternoon herbology with the Hufflepuffs.

I was honestly surprised I hadn't noticed the crush before, and maybe I was imagining things but I thought both that it was reciprocated and that their respective heads of house thought it was a good match. I definitely thought I was sending pretty definite looks at Flitwick and McGonagall that said, "Look at these two, aren't they so adorable and we should make sure they get together?" Maybe they thought I was just being weird, rather than giving me tacit permission to overcompensate for stealing Percy's dating mojo the day before.

When McGonagall set up the lesson for the day, I certainly thought she was sending me signals. "As a bit of a first-day review for OWL year, let's think back to one of the first transfigurations you accomplished as first years, where you transformed a matchstick into a needle. The reverse is actually far more complicated, if your changes are more than cosmetic. I'd like you all to turn a needle into a matchstick, which is capable of being struck to produce flame."

"Professor," I began, barely able to control my smirk, "I didn't actually cover this as a first year, so I may need some extra help. Can I partner with Percy and… maybe, Ms. Clearwater so I get a cross-house understanding of how this works?"

"If they're amenable," she allowed.

As we gathered around a desk, Penelope asked, "Why ask to work with me, Dresden?"

I shrugged, trying to look like it was no big deal, "Percy mentioned you were brilliant."

"He did?" she said, suddenly paying attention to Percy, who shrugged and was trying to keep from turning as red as his hair.

"Well you are, Ms. Clearwater," he said, without any sense that he was being anything but forthright. "Though I suspect Harry does not actually need much help from  _ me _ ."

I gave him a frown for being overly self-deprecating, even though he wasn't  _ wrong _ , but said, "I assume you know way more about Gamp's laws than I do, after you were just rattling them off for our thought exercise last night. Transfiguring an inert object to a chemically complex one interacts with those, right?"

"Actually, yes," he admitted, suddenly off in magical wonk theory land. "In this kind of transfiguration, you are changing the iron of the needle into the carbon of the match, but the remaining chemistry is essentially conjured from raw magic. Otherwise, cancelling the transformation after the match burned could cause gaseous particles to change back into iron in a chemical configuration that does not make sense."

Penelope interjected, "But doesn't the smoke contain some of the carbon from the match? Wouldn't that part still change back to iron and cause similar problems?"

He lit up, "If it was a pure iron needle, certainly. I think that is why we use steel needles for the process, because the steel contains trace amounts of carbon in its structure. I would wager, if fully tested under controlled conditions, any carbon turned into smoke is either pure magic or the carbon contained in the steel of the needle."

"Which we could test by reverting the ashes of the match and seeing if they're pure iron!" said Penelope, excited.

I just grinned at the two nerds and mentioned, "Then let's figure out how to get the transfiguration to work, so you can move on to the fun, sciency part."

The process  _ did  _ prove to be somewhat tricky, with all three of us getting matches that wouldn't light the first couple of times, but each succeeding to McGonagall's delight by the end of class. Both of my lab partners were very intrigued by my practice of using chalk circles for transfiguration instead of a focus. Both also seemed delighted when, as they'd hypothesized, the ashes of the burnt matches reverted back to pure iron once de-transfigured.

After a quick lunch, the first arithmancy class was the most intimate teaching experience so far, much more similar to my previous schooling since there were only six students in the class. In addition to Percy, Penelope, and me, the other Gryffindor prefect, Alexis, and two Ravenclaw students were present. None of the other three were also taking runes, which I figured was a mistake because the classes were very complimentary. There were a small number of Hufflepuffs and a Slytherin taking the class as well, but they weren't there on Tuesdays due to a conflict with another class.

Professor Vector was a formidable, dark-haired woman who favored crimson robes. She had an edge of foreign pronunciation to her English accent, as if she'd been born elsewhere, maybe Russia. Her introductory speech was succinct, "Arithmancy OWLs are about the basics, so this year we will perfect them. You will prove that you are competent in algebra, geometry, and basic trigonometric functions that translate one into the other. You will diagram the spell matrices for the signature charms and curses taught in your other classes. You will be able to translate Latin with high proficiency, as well as some Ancient Greek. You will be able to hear the incantation and see the motions for an unfamiliar spell, and use that to estimate the likely results of casting the spell. Conversely, you will be given the desired effects of an unfamiliar spell and suggest the necessary gestures and cadence of the spoken spell phrase.

"This has all been a warm-up. While I want you to prioritize getting high marks on your OWLs, never forget that the first three years of this class are just to give you the tools you need for your real purpose. Next year, we start in earnest learning to improve and spontaneously adapt existing spells, as well as to create new spells entirely. If you're feeling confident and keeping up with your homework, I'm happy to help you get a head start on that process this year. It's the real fun of arithmancy, and I'm excited to get us there.

"But, for now, let's start our review of algebra."

As we were packing up, it was Penelope that approached Percy and mentioned, "I'm really looking forward to actually making spells. I may take the professor up on the offer to start early."

"Sounds like a really cool  _ extracurricular project _ ," I said, raising an eyebrow at Percy.

Percy looked like he was going to be stubborn, but accepted the hint after a moment and said, "What Harry is saying, is that we were talking last night about possible student projects that would look good on an application for something like the Department of Mysteries after Hogwarts. You would be more than welcome to be involved, if you have the time."

She bit her lip in worry, and said, "Do you think I'd actually have a shot?"

I was confused, but Percy seemed to understand, and said, "While their hiring practices and alumni are largely unknown, as I understand it, the Unspeakables are much more meritocratic than most of the other departments. Most of the jobs at the Ministry, as Harry bluntly brought to my attention, do not actually use much magic, so they tend to go to the better-connected. But as far as I know, everyone in Mysteries is extremely competent, so that makes it harder to get in just based on a family name."

That was a relief for the the apparently non-pureblood Ms. Clearwater, so she nodded, "I'm definitely up for discussing it. Let me know. I better get to creatures class, though!"

"We have to go to the greenhouses. Can we walk you out of the castle?" asked Percy, puffling up a little as he found the courage to be gallant.

"Why thank you, Mr. Weasley," she grinned.

##  Yearbook

Wednesday and Thursday were an arbitrary shuffle of my first two days of classes, but, because the scheduling was so weird, after lunch on Thursday, I was done for the week. It took me until Friday afternoon to realize that I had a big problem: the wizarding world was  _ boring _ . If I had a free afternoon to myself previously, I could head to the park, go see a movie, or choose from libraries packed full of novels.

The wizarding world didn't have any kind of analogue to film, despite the moving photographs and paintings, and mostly didn't seem to realize what they were missing. And another downside of there being one wizard for a thousand muggles and insular as well was the lack of quality fiction. According to a popular sci-fi writer, 90% of everything was crap. In the muggle world, that 10% of possible good stuff was still a huge number of books. But for every thousand quality muggle novels, there was one wizarding novel. And, unlike in the rest of the world, good art didn't really seem to cross easily between countries.

I'd spent most of Friday sampling Hogwarts' fiction section—just a single shelf—and was really getting worried. I broke down and asked the dour librarian, Madam Pince, what she recommended for entertainment reading. "Well, I can see your difficulty," she explained. "I'm sure muggles have to invent interesting stories from total fiction, but plenty of wizards and witches lead such interesting lives that the biographical section can serve as entertainment reading. If you're looking for something modern, we have a set of Gilderoy Lockhart's memoirs."

She was certainly right, in that Lockhart was one of the better writers in the wizarding world. How anyone thought he was anything but a novelist baffled me, however. Did he pretend to be this Poirot-esque dandy adventurer when he met his fans? I'd be interested to meet the guy, but his command of magic wouldn't have been impressive for a muggle. How did wizards that had been to school not see the obvious problems in his descriptions of spells and creatures?

Percy found me ensconced in a reading nook before dinner, halfway through  _ Year with the Yeti _ . "My mother loves those," he noted, voice low to keep Pince from being upset.

"Have you read them?" I asked. He shook his head and I flipped back to a page I'd marked earlier. "Read that paragraph."

Obliging, though with a confused expression, I watched Percy's face tense up, and he whispered, "That is completely inaccurate." He glanced at my face, saw me nodding, and asked, "Is it all like this?" I pointed to the other places I'd marked, and he read those as well. "I… this is a  _ fourth year spell _ , but he got it completely wrong. Mother said these were  _ biographies _ ."

"The writing is good," I grimaced. "Maybe everyone just gets caught up in the story and overlooks the inaccuracies, or thinks they're deliberately changed to prevent kids from trying it."

"Perhaps," he allowed. "While I can understand pleasure reading, you might have more luck availing yourself of the nonfiction books. Hogwarts has quite a number of rare books of spells and studies of magical theory that you cannot read anywhere else."

"Fair point, I guess," I admitted. "I'm just trying out ways to de-stress before I hit the part of the school year where there's no way I'm going to have the willpower to try to learn for pleasure."

He nodded, "Sport, table games, and hand crafts are the main contenders, I fear. I, as noted, have little free time that is not devoted to homework and prefect duties."

"That reminds me: what's the deal with homework? I mean, we're going to take OWL exams at the end of the year and that controls which sixth-year classes you can take. But, if I just decided I didn't want to do homework because I thought I could pass the OWL without it…"

He winced, the idea of shirking schoolwork clearly almost physically painful to him, but he allowed, "There would likely be very little consequence. For flagrant violations, you might be assigned detentions or docked house points. But, particularly with no guardians likely to punish you for poor marks, dashing off mediocre essays might not matter much. As I understand it, many students here are already poor writers and logicians, so sub-par written work with strong practical demonstrations might not even be noticed."

I grinned, "You thought about it but couldn't bring yourself to sandbag, could you?"

"While I am considering your suggestion for other career options, I  _ have  _ planned to work at the Ministry for quite some time. 'Sandbagging' as you refer to it  _ is  _ a classic bureaucratic ploy. And I  _ do _ wish quality written work was better incentivized. The professors barely even give out house points for strong essays compared to how many they give on-the-spot for class participation."

"And the house points barely matter anyway," I grumbled.

"Quite. Well, I need to go find a few more books before dinner. See you there." He nodded and wandered off.

Not really feeling like finishing the "biography" I'd been reading, I started wandering the library looking for something else to catch my eye. It was by happenstance that I found the shelves devoted to school yearbooks. I almost completely disregarded it, before remembering that McGonagall had mentioned my mother went to school here, albeit briefly. Maybe she was in the yearbooks.

It was harder than it should have been, since I didn't actually know my mother's exact age or maiden name. I wound up having to come back after dinner and most of Saturday morning before finally finding a promising candidate in the 1967-1968 yearbook. Margaret McGregor was a fifth-year Slytherin who hadn't appeared in the next year's book, so must have left after earning her OWLs. It was hard to be sure with her as a 16-year-old against the one adult picture of my mother that my father had shown me, but I thought I saw a family resemblance.

I knew for sure when I found, toward the end of the book, a candid photo of her and another girl relaxing by the lake. Even sitting on the shore, she was obviously much taller than her friend, which would make sense for my frankly unusual height. But while I'd never gotten a really good look at my mother, I had plenty of opportunity to recognize my godmother (even though she was over twenty years younger in the photo). All her implications of being some kind of ancient immortal were washed away by the simple caption of the photo.

_ Best friends relax by the lake (fifth years Margaret McGregor and Bellatrix Black). _

##  Gaining Focus

The next Thursday afternoon I was, as McGonagall had warned, set up in a spare classroom trying to see if students that were having trouble with wand magic might have an affinity with my style. The mostly-empty stone room had only a few uncomfortable wooden chairs, a table, and, unfortunately, a window with a view of the lawn.

"Aw, I should be out there, showin' off me flyin'!" complained Seamus Finnegan, his face pressed almost against the window. He was a tiny Irish first-year with bowl-cut black hair and mostly-missing eyebrows. Apparently, his early attempts at wandwork and potions were extremely prone to fiery explosions.

"I should be out there with my house instead of stuck with a bunch of Gryffindorks," whined Millicent Bulstrode, hunched in one of the chairs. She was a moon-faced, dark-haired girl with a pronounced jaw who already had a couple inches of height on most of the boys in her class. McGonagall told me to do what I could; rather than explosions, she wasn't getting much of anything from her attempts at casting spells.

"Well, personally,  _ I'm _ quite happy to get out of physical education for something more interesting," proclaimed Hermione Granger, who was already at the head of her class for wand magic, but had somehow convinced McGonagall that she should sit in on this rather than have to take flying lessons with the rest of her year.

She wouldn't explain how, but McGonagall had found a bunch of non-wand foci somewhere in the school's storage, and I'd kept several of them. I was reasonably certain I understood what they'd been designed for, and was able to produce some miscellaneous spells with them. The others had been either too old or too obscure for me to risk putting in the hands of 11-year-olds.

I set out the three foci I'd found that seemed designed for light: a copper rod about the size of a pen that was covered with verdigris, a palm-sized circular steel-and-tin amulet with a quartz crystal mounted in the middle, and an honest-to-history Edison-style light bulb with runes etched along the base.

"I know it's not fair, Finnigan," I began, grabbing his attention and motioning him to take a seat, "but I don't particularly want to be here either, so the sooner we get through this the sooner we all get back the rest of our afternoons." The boy grudgingly took a seat, and Hermione sat up in hers at attention. "The only charm you're supposed to have already had was the light charm, right?"

"I've actually had a lot of success with several charms in the textbook including–" began Hermione, before Bulstrode cut her off.

"He means what have we all learned, mu– Granger, not what you've been prissing about in class," the stocky girl said cuttingly to the over-eager muggleborn. "Yes, wand-lighting is the only charm we've been taught yet. I hear Finnegan set his wand on fire."

"At least mine did somethin', ya harpy!" shouted the Irish boy, surprised at being brought into the fight with Hermione.

Before they could get into a petulant three-way argument, I grabbed the light bulb and shouted, " _ Lumos! _ "

The flash of brilliant white light from the now-lit bulb got their attention. I was going to have to send a very sarcastic thank you note to McGonagall for including house rivalries in my involuntary volunteer teaching time.

"Thanks for the answer," I snarked, "Can we do the lesson without trying to get into a fight every five seconds?" Three tiny heads gave petulant nods, so I continued. "This is a purpose-built focus. The three I've set out can do the light charm and possibly some other similar spells. Unlike your wands, which have to be complicated enough to produce  _ any  _ spell, these are much simpler enchantments.

"The first part of that is materials. Your wands are rare woods and exotic cores, each carefully attuned to your magical signatures. Purpose-built foci are a lot cheaper to make, and often work well for anyone that knows the spell.

"But the bigger benefit is that you can usually do without wand motions, which is probably what's tripping the two of you up. I never had any talent for getting them right, either. Wand motions are because wands are general tools, and you have to align their inner magical matrix with the matrix of the spell–"

"What?" Finnegan asked. Bulstrode seemed to be closer to getting it, and Hermione clearly wanted to explain it in exhaustive detail to the two.

Before the Gryffindor witch could start rapidly repeating the paragraphs from the textbook she'd likely memorized, I rephrased, "A spell is just a way of expressing your own inner magic in a way that happens to do what you want. It's like you're making an invisible web of energy, and if you get it shaped right, it does what you want. The spell words and foci are all just ways of helping your mind create that pattern."

I set down the light bulb, which winked out when I let go of it. I'd had to work hard the last couple of nights to get this trick down, and I summoned up my magic, visualized what I wanted from the simple spell, and wordlessly passed energy into my hand. It was much dimmer than the bulb, but a flickering light was clearly coming from the palm of my hand. Hermione's eyes grew wide because she knew how hard that was supposed to be, but at least the other two looked mildly impressed.

Closing my hand and ending the spell, I continued, "You don't actually need the focus or the words, but it makes magic a hell of a lot easier." Hermione looked very slightly offended at the curse word, but it didn't bother the other two, who both seemed like the type to curse up a storm in private. "But, anyway, since the wand is a general tool, making the right motion is important to getting your mind and the tool to agree on the shape of the magic you want to make. Specific foci, like these, already have that part of the spell matrix embedded in them. Think of it as already having the wand motion built in. You just have to do the rest of the spell. So, I guess, everyone try visualizing your intention like Flitwick taught you and saying the spell word."

Seamus grabbed the light bulb, having already been shown it worked. Millicent took the amulet, and Hermione grabbed the copper rod. It actually took Hermione a moment to get it to light up, fighting her urge to make a wand motion. The lighting charm didn't have  _ much  _ of a motion, but it was still present and could potentially misalign a focus.

Not long after the precocious muggleborn, the other two managed to produce light from their foci, to their obvious delight. "That was much easier!" exclaimed the boy, and the Slytherin witch couldn't help but nod in agreement.

I was now looking at probably taking on part-time apprentices. I'd almost been hoping they wouldn't have been able to get a light with these either. Oh well, maybe I could talk McGonagall into giving me some token payment if this became a regular thing. Being flat broke was really cutting into my ability to make long-term plans. "Good job. I don't want to make you think they'll all be this easy, though. The light charm is still one of the simplest possible spells, which is why you learn it first.

"For more complex spells, there might be some rudimentary motions necessary, and if you're using a focus made by someone else it may actually take some trial and error to 'feel out' what you have to do to get it to work perfectly. If you really get into this, you basically have to make most of your own foci, which is a lot of extra work on top of meaning you really need to take runes and maybe even arithmancy once you get to choose electives."

That brought Seamus and Millicent down a bit, though from her pleased grin I could tell Hermione had  _ already  _ planned to take those classes just as soon as someone would let her. "Did you know that so few students can do  _ any  _ spells without wands that it's a huge bonus to your practicals for your OWLs and NEWTs to be able to demonstrate that you can?" exclaimed the bushy-haired Gryffindor.

The two worried kids perked up a bit at that, and promised that they'd consider it. I was suddenly hoping that they agreed because it was very clear that after this I'd be training Hermione  _ anyway _ , so I might as well get some kind of formal credit for it.

As we left the classroom, Mrs. Norris, Filch's cat, was curled up in a window near the end of the hall, soaking up the afternoon sunlight. "It's tha' terrible tattlin' beastie," groaned Seamus.

The two girls, to their apparent mutual chagrin, both exclaimed "Kitty!"

I smiled and said, "That's my friend, Mrs. Norris. She's a sweetheart if you aren't causing trouble for Mr. Filch. Do you want to meet her?" Seamus shook his head and headed back to his room, but the two girls were soon giving the skinny cat very thorough pets. Maybe this would work out, after all.

##  Family Honor

I was up late that evening, sitting in a corner of the Gryffindor common room and reading. I was up late  _ most  _ nights, hoping that going to bed exhausted would hold off the nightmares. The room was silent save for the popping of the banked fire, which provided most of the light. I'd retained the light amulet from the foci this afternoon, since it reminded me of my own normal focus for light, which I hoped to recover some day soon. I was feeding it just enough power to read by, and with the light coming from my chest, I assumed I was almost invisible to the rest of the room. I didn't want to be hassled about why I was up when the second-years went to astronomy class later.

For a minute, I thought Hermione had already talked herself into second-year classes as she made her way into the common room in a pink bathrobe, sat in a chair near the exit, and extinguished her wand. Because of the hiding in the dark, I assumed she'd had a fight with her roommates, and I was feeling too selfish to stick my nose in and help her work it out.

So I was surprised when she turned out to have chosen the spot to confront Neville and Ron, who had also slipped into the room in bathrobes and were on their way out. I wasn't paying enough attention to listen to the whole conversation, but I caught something about telling Percy before they slipped out of the exit. I had really expected that would be locked at night.

Percy was out doing a patrol before he grabbed the second-years to lead to astronomy anyway, so I set down my book and followed to see what the kids were up to. I could believe the twins talking Ron into going out at night to do something stupid, but Neville seemed too level-headed for that, and why had Hermione not come back in? I figured it out when I left and the portrait snapped closed, with no fat lady in it to re-admit students. What a bizarre way of locking the room.

The trio of first-years had already headed off. I spotted their little heads flitting through the moonlight as they went downstairs. Shrugging, I followed them down: in for a knut, in for a galleon, I thought the local saying went. They were pathetically easy to keep track of, even with a couple minute head start, and I wondered if they realized how lucky they were that none of the prefects or Filch had caught them. I wasn't the stealthiest person in the universe, either, but I was paying extra attention and was pretty sure I'd hear anyone coming around a corner. I could certainly hear the children hissing at each other to be quiet.

I'd followed them all the way downstairs and then back up to the third floor when I saw the platinum-blond-haired boy, Malfoy, and one of his prepubescent bodyguards sauntering up the other stairway, apparently intending to rendezvous with the Gryffindors. I grinned and slipped around a corner ahead of him, when he passed by, I said, "Lovely night for a stroll, huh?"

The boys froze. I thought the bigger one was going to lose control of his bodily functions, but Malfoy managed to hold onto his poise, turned, and let out a minuscule sigh of relief when he realized I wasn't a prefect or a teacher. "I find the moonlight and silence quite conducive to contemplation," smirked the boy. I was honestly impressed by his vocabulary.

"Bad direction to go, then," I tried to match his smirk, "since there are some loud Gryffindors up ahead that might ruin your meditation."

He tilted his head, offering me a point in the exchange, and suggested, "If I were to say I was on the way to settle a matter of honor between the houses of Malfoy and Longbottom, on behalf of Slytherin and Gryffindor, would you interfere?"

"Depends on the justification," I shrugged.

"After she missed flying class to attend your seminar this afternoon, the Gryffindors in question may have besmirched the honor and talents of Ms. Bulstrode."

"And you didn't say anything similar about Mr. Finnegan and Ms. Granger?" I asked.

Another scored point from the 11-year-old, and he admitted, "Honestly, many things were said, and an honor duel is an excellent way to decide the truth of the situation."

I figured the kids didn't know enough spells yet to really hurt each other, though it couldn't hurt for me to be there if I was wrong, so I told him, "Fair enough, I'm actually interested to see how one of these goes." Plus this was a good opportunity to talk to the kid afterward. We'd started ambling in the direction of the trophy room, when I suddenly heard Filch's voice. I motioned for the boys to stay silent and we moved back into an alcove.

Moments later, the trio of Gryffindors tried to silently run out of the far door, crashed into a suit of armor making a cacophonous din, before Ron screamed, "Scarper!" and they tore off away from us, with Filch not far behind. I saw a tiny feline body break off from the chase and saunter over in our direction.

"That cat is going to be a problem," whispered Malfoy.

I grinned and shook my head, bending down and waiting for her to come over. "Evening, Missus," I said, giving her a few ear scritches. She butted my knee with her head, gave a look at the two Slytherin boys as if daring them to do something, and then turned to bound off after Filch. "Well, looks like that honor duel at midnight didn't work out. Can I walk you boys back to your common room?"

We periodically heard the sound of the chase proceeding throughout the rest of the third floor as we descended downstairs toward the dungeons, and I figured it was safe to have the conversation I needed to have with Malfoy. "You're not just the Malfoy heir, right? Your mother was a Black?"

"She was," he admitted, dodging the question of whether that made him the Black heir.

"I assume that makes Bellatrix Black your aunt?" None of the professors that had been in the yearbook I found seemed to want to talk about either my mother  _ or  _ my godmother, but I'd found some references to Bellatrix's sister, Narcissa, who looked a lot like Draco Malfoy's mother from when I'd seen them at the train station.

"Bellatrix Lestrange, after her marriage," he said, hiding some kind of twitch at the mention of her name. "However, yes."

"I assume you don't get to see her very often?"

"She's one of the most wanted criminals in Britain, so I can't imagine I'd ever have seen her," hedged the boy, but there was a hollowness to his polished language that hadn't been there before.

"She's a scary lady," I said. He just nodded, swallowing hard. "Did you know that she's my godmother?" Another nod. "Apparently she was best friends with my mother, but nobody that was at school with them wants to tell me anything about it. And your aunt was never very forthcoming, at least in any way that made much sense."

"I'd imagine most of the adults around here are reticent to talk about anyone who fought on the other side in the war," he said. "I could owl my parents, if you'd like. They might have more information."

"That would be a big help, thanks," I told him. We were about to descend into the first level of the dungeons, when a prefect turned a corner up ahead and I'd been talking too much to have a chance of hearing. To my great fortune, it was Penelope. "Good evening, Ms. Clearwater," I said, trying to be nonchalant and hoping that Malfoy's bodyguard didn't give us away, since Malfoy had already put on a mask of innocence.

"I don't think any of you three are supposed to be out and about this late," frowned the Ravenclaw witch.

"Mr. Crabbe and I got turned around leaving the library and might have been wandering all night if Mr. Dresden hadn't helped direct us back to our common room," Draco said, smoothly. I just gave a friendly smile, not wanting to confirm nor deny the boy's glib lie.

She clearly thought about punishment, but then shrugged and said, "Then I guess it's good that you all found each other. Sleep well, you two," she said, dismissing the Slytherins.

"Could you please give me an escort back to  _ my _ common room, to avoid any other issues?" I asked.

"Suits me," she nodded, "I needed to patrol that way anyway." After we'd walked for a few moments, the astute girl asked, "Do I want to know what was really going on?"

"The common room doors really ought to lock the first-years in overnight," I admitted. "We'll see how agitated Percy is, before I tattle on 11-year-olds from my  _ own _ house who may have been up to some shenanigans."

That got a laugh. "Honestly, sneaking out to go to the library late at night seems like something  _ I'd _ have gotten up to, first year."

"Runes lab for me," I said, then added, "but it wasn't even a month ago and, to be fair, nobody had actually told me it wasn't allowed."

"Yeah," she sighed. "I was hoping getting to be a prefect would mean I could get some work done after curfew. It's not like I'm going to go charging off to do, what'd you call it, shenanigans? But it eats up so much time, it's hard to see the perks."

"What  _ is  _ your schedule like?" I asked. "I know we mentioned the research project to you, but Percy is dragging his feet about how much time he'd actually have for it with all his other studies and prefect duties."

"Ravenclaws make time for research projects," she grinned. "I'm glad you're trying to talk Percy into it. That boy has always struck me as too practical for his own good."

"You're the opposite?"

"Maybe. I've certainly been accused of retreating into theory. I get much higher marks on my essays than on my spellwork. If we're doing a project, I'd really like to do something like come up with a spell. It's too predictable for me to just write a paper on the theory of something."

"Makes sense to me," I said, realizing that I now had to figure out a good project that might get Percy out of his dead-end aspirations  _ and _ that included spellcrafting. No pressure. "Ah, there's the common room." Percy was just coming back up the opposite stairway, presumably from dropping the second-years at astronomy class. To head off any jealousy he might feel seeing me walking with Penelope, I said, "Hey Percy, Ms. Clearwater gave me an escort back after I helped some lost first-years. Maybe you two would enjoy patrolling together, this evening?"

I shot him a wink before whispering "pig snout" to the returned fat lady in the portrait and heading in for the night. I'd apparently gotten in just behind the trio of wandering first-years, as I overheard Hermione shout, "We could have all been killed—or worse, expelled! Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to bed."

Ron and Neville were sharing a look of confusion before they saw me walk in and scampered up to their own bedroom.


	7. Stone Faced 7: Deep Funk

##  In the Dumps

It hadn't taken long for the kids to spill their adventure to pretty much the entirety of Gryffindor house. Apparently, they'd bumbled their way into the forbidden, locked corridor trying to hide from Filch, and had almost gotten eaten by the immense cerberus in the room. I suspected the frightened, tiny children were exaggerating about the size of the three-headed dog and how easy it would have been for it to maul them standing just inside the doorway, but it still seemed like there should have been a better lock on the door.

Hermione was oddly fixated on the fact that the dog was standing over a trap door. I'd asked her if she could figure out a better way for Hagrid to clean up the dog's poop, since he couldn't cast vanishing spells, and that had seemed to quiet her down. Still, nothing I had heard about cerberi indicated that they couldn't just be kept in the Forbidden Forest for creatures class, none of the upper-years had mentioned it being in their lessons, and they  _ were _ , famously, guard animals. So despite making fun of the obsession of the three 11-year-olds, I was also a bit curious.

I'd spent a couple of weeks falling into something of a rhythm when the opportunity to go bother Hagrid about it fell into my lap. McGonagall held me back after transfiguration class on Wednesday afternoon and began, "Mr. Dresden, while your comprehension of the material is clearly sufficient based on your classroom work, I, and a few of your other teachers, have noticed that your essays are of a remarkably lower standard."

"Finding it hard to get the hang of using quills, ma'am," I suggested.

She scoffed, "And if it was only your atrocious penmanship that was in question, that would be another issue. Instead, I'm referring to how you seem adept at producing exactly the bare minimum number of inches specified, while filling your work with sentences full of adjectives, subordinate clauses, and elaborate description, but little to actually prove you're spending time researching the subject."

She stared at me, as if trying to prompt another justification, but since she hadn't actually asked a question, I let her hang with what was hopefully a nonchalant but respectful expression on my face.

"Very well," she relented, "if that's the way it's to be, I suspect bad letter grades won't have much meaning to you and that taking points won't matter to you either. Since Mr. Filch and Mr. Hagrid asked me specifically to assign you to them should you suffer a detention, a detention it will be. Please do strive to think about this punishment the next time you have the urge to work so far below your level to speed up your homework."

"Yes, ma'am," I said, trying to look contrite but probably just doing a very bad job of hiding my grin.

The detention wound up being scheduled that Saturday morning, and I met the caretaker and grounds keeper outside, bundled for an already frigid fall morning. "Ready for your detention, Dresden?" Filch smirked.

"Guys, if you wanted my help with something, you could have just asked," I said, absently petting Mrs. Norris, who didn't seem to be any happier to be out in the cold than I was.

"Figured ye'd get a detention sooner or later," shrugged Hagrid, "an' we could kill two birds." Behind him sat his massive wolfhound, Fang, slapping the ground loudly with his tail while giving Filch's cat a look that admitted she was in charge, but that he still very much wanted to be friends, if Mrs. Norris would deign to oblige.

"Fair enough. So what's the plan?" I asked.

Filch ran a hand over his coat, as if feeling the vest underneath that I'd made for him. After taking the unexpected stunner from Quirrell, I'd made a point of actually finishing my protective vest, and made a slightly lower-powered copy for Filch, as I'd promised. "You mentioned that materials were the bottleneck for making more items?" I nodded at the hunched old man, since I'd used up most of the extras I'd gotten from my shopping trip, and probably couldn't talk Professor Babbling into letting me go nuts with the school supplies to make anything that caught my fancy. "It so happens that I have a pile of confiscated items that you could maybe use?"

I'd seen Filch's massive list of prohibited items, and heard tales of it growing every time he took distracting magical toys and other prank items off of students. While it was always easier to work with pristine materials, I admitted, "That's a definite possibility. I'd need to see the pile and figure out what's recyclable, but that would be great."

The men nodded, and we started following Hagrid toward the forest. Filch explained, "I used to keep all of this in my office, but it proved to be an attractive nuisance. After those awful Weasley twins figured out how to sneak in and start putting it all back into circulation, I had to find a safer location…"

"He gives 'em to me ta dump in the woods," explained Hagrid, as we walked between the first trees of the forest. "It's a surprisin' big pile."

"Over two decades of hooligans adds up," Filch complained, carefully picking his way through the underbrush, hunched in his ratty old coat with Mrs. Norris curled up on the back of his neck in the coat's hood. "I was glad to get it all out of my office, to be honest. I've so much more space now, and fewer pests getting in, both creature and boy."

"If you'd waited until this year, you could have just put it all in with the cerberus," I joked, trying to steer the conversation.

"Aye, Fluffy's a good boy," revealed Hagrid. "How'd you know about tha' anyway?"

"Albus might've well put a sign on the damn door saying, 'Stupid kids, come explore,'" Filch answered for me. "I'm sure everyone in the school knows about it by now. Pretty sure I chased some hooligans up there a couple weeks ago."

"They could at least put a spell-resistant lock on the door," I added. "The unlocking charm is one of the first things they teach first-years."

Hagrid grumbled, "No budget fer a good enchanted lock. An' I'm sure Dumbledore could cast a lockin' spell tha' the kids couldn't break, but then how'm I ta get in ta feed 'im?"

I thought about it for a bit, and suggested, "They probably should have just said that you were trying to rehabilitate a dangerous magical creature, and that the school wasn't liable if it bit the faces off of out-of-bounds students. A vague threat isn't much of a deterrent for these kids. You wouldn't even have to reveal that it's up there guarding something…"

"How'd ya know about–" began the large groundskeeper.

"Hagrid," Filch interrupted, "Dresden was asking me if I knew anything about his mother. Slightly before my time, but you were here when she was a student. What was that name again?"

I shot Filch a look, and he looked back at me, smug. He had clearly realized as well as I did that Hagrid was about to start spilling secrets if he kept on that subject. So he gave me something else to question him about that he rightly suspected I wanted to know more. "Margaret McGregor. Looks like she left school after taking her OWLs in 1968," I allowed.

"Oh, aye, I remember Maggie. Tall girl, I can see why yer not as small as the other students." Hagrid thought for a few more moments as we skirted some trees and entered a darker part of the woods, the trees blocking out even the bright morning sunlight. "She were always nice ta me, unlike most'a the rest o' Slytherin. Real smart. I wonder if she'd ha' done better in Ravenclaw."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

He thought of how to explain himself, then said, "She just wanted ta know everythin' there was ta know. Didn't like when the professors told her some things were secret fer a reason. Wouldn't stay away from learnin' dark spells. I don' think she wanted to  _ use  _ them, mind ye, she just wanted to know. But she 'ad a harder an' harder time seein' eye-ta-eye with the professors, and left as soon as she could without gettin' her wand snapped."

"Where'd she go?"

"I don' rightly know. I know she was best friends with tha' Bellatrix woman, an' that'un were one o' the main Death Eaters. But t'weren't never no news of Maggie fightin' good wizards and witches, an' if yer da' was a muggle, she mustn't've bought inta the whole thing about Blood Purity. So she must've made good choices by the end." I had about a million more questions, but he suddenly said, "Ah, here we are."

There was a natural spot in the rolling ground of the forest here, where a depression had formed in the corner between two large trees. Hagrid had filled that shallow hole with what was probably several wheelbarrows full of miscellaneous wizard-made trinkets. I didn't actually keep up with the cutting edge of magical toys, but based on seeing Filch's list, I could make assumptions about things like fanged frisbees, nose-biting teacups, and ever-bashing boomerangs. Everything else blurred into a sea of handmade detritus.

I knelt down at the edge of the pile and poked at it with my staff. "If the two of you want to help, anything with metal components or that looks like it's held together with fasteners is a good start." I'd pushed aside a frisbee and was reaching to pull out something made of fabric that might be salvageable when I felt the end of the cloth vibrate and a hissing emerge from beneath it. I'd apparently disturbed a nest of something that started to boil out. "Is this going to happen every time I'm in this forest?!" I shouted at Hagrid, scrambling back.

"Doxies! Don't let 'em bite ya!" bellowed Hagrid as the first of the tiny bluish creatures took to the air. Filch was already falling back, Mrs. Norris hissing as she leapt from his back. Fang, surprisingly a huge coward of a dog, was whining and sprinting for cover.

Not wanting to get a swarm of venomous fairy-bugs to the face, I yelled " _ Stupefy! _ " and then endeavored to get a shield up as I scrambled backward. Even with the staff, my aim wasn't great for tiny, swift-moving creatures, but it was a target-rich environment. A doxy near the back took my stunner to the face and crashed back down into the pile, but that just alerted the rest of them that I was a threat. Fortunately, my shield could keep physical threats at bay, but it wouldn't take them long to crawl around it.

"I told you we should have brought doxycide!" yelled Filch, as Mrs. Norris swatted a couple of doxies out of the air that had gone after the retreating caretaker.

"They don' normally nest outside!" argued Hagrid. "Though, t'was a warm summer, I suppose." He was swatting at the cloud with his hands, the pests not able to compensate for the sheer size of those hands or his surprising speed, so some fell with each sweep.

Magical pests were not something I'd ever really had to deal with, as they tended to congregate at buildings with really dense and ancient magic. Until Hogwarts, I'd never lived in such a place. I wracked my brain as a couple dozen of the ugly, multi-armed fae beat against the shimmering dome of force I held, anchored to my shield bracelet. I gave up and asked, "Don't suppose either of you remember what spells are best against these?"

"My mother swore by the knockback jinx," yelled Filch, already clearing the treeline.

"Right. Here goes." Fortunately, that was within the spectrum of spells my staff could manage. I took in a breath, visualizing the spell spreading wide, timed it, dropped my shield hand as my staff came forward, and yelled, " _ Flipendo! _ "

A ripple of disturbed air washed out from the end of my staff and spread across the swarm. As it passed over each doxy, they shot away from me like bullets. Quite a few made crunching sounds as they were knocked into the trees or the ground. Those that managed to avoid hitting anything, and the few that had escaped the spell, seemed to realize how dangerous things were for them and fled.

"Well, good job, then. That's sorted," smiled Hagrid. "Fortunately, they've never been able ta bite through my skin." He reached over to where the swarm had come from and brushed items aside to reveal the hole they'd dug beneath the objects. "Don' look like there was a queen, t'least. I should prob'ly put down some poison and bury this when we're done, though."

I just shook my head and walked over to start sorting when Hagrid hadn't been swarmed by another wave of nastiness, and Filch slowly made his way back as well. Maybe it was the adrenaline crash, but as I spent the next several minutes grabbing likely-looking items, I started to feel exhausted. Maybe twenty minutes after the fight, my vision began to blur and I admitted to the two men, "I don't feel so great."

Hagrid grabbed my shoulder out of concern, asking, "Did ya get bit, Harry?"

"I don't think so…" I slurred, then noted that my shielding hand  _ did  _ feel a little numb. I held it up and saw a distinctive red bump formed just above my bracelet, where one must have gotten through between dropping the shield and casting the knockback jinx. "Hell's bells," I swore, then lost consciousness.

##  Personal Projects

I clawed myself to consciousness, having no idea how long I'd been out. Once the deep muscle-ache set in, I wished I'd stayed out for longer. I was back in Pomfrey's Victorian medical wing. It looked like it was getting dark outside, so I'd been out at least a few hours. The technicolor Gandalf sitting on the seat next to my bed smiled as I looked around, "Ah, Mr. Dresden, we thought you'd be waking soon."

"Stupid, awful wildfae," I grumbled, my voice raspy, "Someone needs to give the Veil a tuneup."

"You may still be a bit delirious, my boy," Dumbledore said, seemingly confused.

I shook my head, and tersely explained, "Wizards built up the Veil to keep the Nevernever separate. Too much magic in one spot stretches it out, little things can still slip through. Getting too easy for them to find holes."

"I see. Children's stories. I wasn't aware that Justin Du Morne would have gone in for that kind of thing."

I coughed out a sardonic laugh and looked around, finding a water glass on the bedside table. "Yeah. Children's stories. Just like the Deathly Hallows," I said, taking a drink.

He nodded, glancing away. "I suppose that foolish quest  _ would  _ be the kind of thing Justin was interested in. As a young man, he was certainly keen to raid Grindelwald's safehouses looking for secrets and lore. And Gellart was  _ very  _ obsessed with those old stories."

"How many wizards die every year when those things get into their old houses and bite someone?"

"Fortunately, doxy venom is only exceptionally dangerous to the infirm, leaving plenty of time to find and treat most others. Not that you should have had to experience such a thing. Minerva has thoroughly chastised Hagrid and Argus for that lapse in housekeeping."

I shrugged, since that was probably fair. Some of the things my godmother had hinted were on the edges of being able to squeeze their way out of the Nevernever would be far more dangerous. Not that I wanted to explain to the Headmaster what my source was, and had been avoiding quite meeting his eyes just in case he went digging. Wizards had erected the Veil around the time of the Hogwarts founders, so it probably still had plenty of time left before things got especially dangerous. Instead, I asked, "Did they at least bring back the stuff we pulled out of the pile?"

"Indeed. I appreciate you thinking of Argus and Hagrid in your extracurricular crafting, though I do wish the three of you would take fewer risks. Both have different reasons for being without magical tools, and haven't responded well to my offers in the past. For whatever reasons of their own pride, they seem more inclined to accept help from a student than handouts from a headmaster."

"Filch is a squib," I guessed, "and doesn't want that rubbed in his face? Meanwhile, Hagrid doesn't want to risk you putting your neck out for him skirting around having his wand snapped?"

"Very astute," twinkled the old man. "I'm quickly coming to the conclusion that we should have offered a study in wandless magic before now. Between those two and the students you're teaching, you're already getting results I could not have envisioned even two months ago. And that's before your personal curiosity. I hear that Mr. Weasley is showing some interest in an extracurricular research project."

I nodded. "The guy's wasted on being some bureaucrat. Penelope Clearwater's interested as well."

His cheek twitched, as if he was intimately aware of the crushes of his students. "Excellent. She also is a bright young witch, whom prejudice might prevent from attaining her goals in life without sufficient experience. Might I suggest a topic?"

"I don't know if either of them will agree to anything, but if I tell them you suggested it, they might be more willing to not over-analyze everything. Percy wants something that will look good to the Unspeakables. Penelope wants something practical, like a spell."

Dumbledore nodded, stroking his beard, but I got the impression that he wasn't  _ actually  _ having to think about it. "Are you aware that there currently exists no offense against dementors? The patronus charm provides protection, and can drive them away, but there's no reliable method of offering them serious harm, much less dispatching them."

It took me a moment, since I'd been unconscious most of the day, but I remembered Dumbledore had seen my memories. I said, "And if that line of research  _ also  _ happens to turn up any clues on how to injure other shadowy, wraithlike entities…"

"Just so."

"What  _ did  _ I fight that night, headmaster?" I asked, hoping to shake loose an answer with directness.

"If we're lucky," he hedged, "Du Morne had invented some new dark ritual that you thwarted, and his research burned with him."

"And if we're  _ unlucky _ ?"

He frowned, clearly unhappy to share this with me, but explained, "I cannot account for much of Justin Du Morne's life, nor his alliances, but his tenure at Hogwarts overlapped another power-hungry dark magic user, and they may have become associates. If that dark wizard managed to cling to some form of life past his destruction a decade ago, his allies might have finally begun to move to bring him back. And, despite Du Morne's death, he was not the only one of such allies unaccounted for…"

It made sense, but I asked to be sure. "You think he was trying to offer me up as some kind of a spirit horse for Voldemort? Do you think they'll try again?"

"If we're unlucky." The old man sighed, clearly sad to have shattered whatever illusions of safety I might have had in my life. He glanced up at Pomfrey, who was bustling into the room, "But Poppy has returned, and I think I must take my leave."

He very specifically didn't promise to let me ask more questions later, but I wasn't expecting to give him much of a choice. I just had to decide what else I needed to know.

##  Sweet Sixteen

I'd built up enough projects that the next few weeks slipped away from me. I kept teaching focus-based magic to the kids once a week and McGonagall agreed to pay me a token amount for the effort, expecting me to want to spend it at the eventual shopping field trip to the nearby wizarding town. It wasn't much, but having a little bit of money was better than none. I felt a twinge of guilt for betraying Filch's trust and selling a few of the more generic toys from the pile to the Weasley twins. They were unlikely to be provably the same ones, weren't too dangerous, and it got me a little more savings and also more allegiance from the twins. I expected to need that friendship eventually.

At least I was helping out Flich on the other side, spending a fair amount of free time in the runes laboratory breaking down the rest of the salvaged items. I had some ideas for what to do with the materials involved, but the problem wasn't just how the materials were already carved up. Enchantment burned the matrix of the magic into the materials. I couldn't just take apart an item and re-use the pieces, but had to render them back into an inert state. For the metals, that meant melting them down. For pieces that wouldn't melt, I was having to research other ways to nullify the magic, and it was slow going.

That wasn't my only reason to spend long weekends in the library. Percy and Penelope—who'd eventually asked us to just call her Penny—liked the idea of the Dumbledore-suggested project, and we'd begun the research as well as an attempt to learn the patronus charm. None of us were really close to getting it to work correctly, though I was perhaps even further behind. I didn't have a focus designed for the spell, and, if I was honest, I was having a hard time coming up with a happy memory to use. My life hadn't exactly been misery, but, especially after the betrayal and deaths of my mentor and girlfriend, even previously pleasant memories were tainted.

When my birthday, which happened to be on Halloween, dawned with no one mentioning it, that didn't lift my mood any. Somehow, my teenaged mind expected it to be as important a date to anyone else as it was to me. But, for those who cared, it was because it marked a decade since the end of the wizarding war.

Most of the kids at school had been too young to really understand, so they either paid lip service to the sacrifices or didn't even pretend to care. I would have been among them, if Dumbledore hadn't warned me that the leader of that faction of magical terrorists was trying to come back and had singled me out.

Arithmancy and runes went by without incident that morning, and I had my class teaching the first-years in the afternoon. I'd started them learning how to use ritual circles to do transfigurations, since I didn't really have any foci that supported the charms they'd learned since the lighting charm. Well, they'd apparently learned the levitation charm that morning, but I wasn't about to hand them my staff to practice that.

Between the intricacies of the lesson and my own funk about my uncelebrated birthday, it took me halfway through the class to ask, "Where's Hermione?"

"Ummm…" Seamus hedged, embarrassed by the question. "Well, she was partnered with Ron in charms this mornin'. She's bein' a swot like usual. Ron was complainin' on the way outta class... an' I may've mentioned how sometimes she was a swot in here." I didn't interrupt, so he eventually continued talking, "An' she wasn't as far away as we thought. She ran past, an' we didn't see her at lunch or in transfiguration, neither."

"Rumor is she's been sobbing in the girls' toilet all day," added Millicent. "The other girls have been joking that she needs to go down to Myrtle's so there's not a sobbing girl in  _ all  _ the toilets." It was left unsaid that Millicent probably hadn't participated in the gossip, since it seemed like the two cat-loving girls had an armistice, if not a friendship.

"Why haven't any of the other girls gone and talked to her?" I asked, expecting the answer.

"I don't think she's real close with any o' them in our house," admitted Seamus.

"None of the others either," added Millicent. It was left unsaid that she only felt a  _ tiny  _ bit guilty admitting that she and Hermione weren't friends and that she hadn't tried to help.

I finished up class, trying to figure out what to do. I'd have gone to McGonagall, but she had her seventh-year NEWT class the rest of the afternoon. I could go try to track down one of the girl prefects, but I didn't know where they were and didn't exactly trust them to be a big sister to Hermione if they hadn't made an effort already. Ultimately, I couldn't live with  _ myself  _ if let a girl spend all day crying in a bathroom without trying to help.

It took me an annoying amount of the last period before dinner to even find her. Hogwarts didn't make sense in the best of times, and I hadn't had a need to map the girls' bathrooms. When I found it, after finally getting one of the girls to tell me (hopefully not assuming I was being a pervert), it just looked like another nondescript classroom door, and had a standard handle with a lock. The key was even sticking out of it (how such a thing had not been stolen by a prankster was an open question).

I knocked at the door with my staff, and when no one said anything I poked my head in. "Hermione, are you in here?" I called, not seeing anyone out and about in the bathroom.

"Go away," her voice came from the last stall, her voice still ragged from crying, "please."

"It's Harry Dresden," I said, not really sure whether I should take that as permission to leave her to work it out on her own. Realizing I needed to do more, I asked, "You sure you don't want to talk about it."

"You'll just think I'm being stupid," moaned the girl.

Well, that definitely sounded less like permission to go to dinner, conscience absolved. "No I won't. I'm going to come in and lock the door so we won't be disturbed, okay?"

There was a hesitation, then she said, "Okay."

I let myself the rest of the way into the bathroom, took the key from the outside of the lock, and locked the door from the inside. I did a little wandless cleaning spell on the floor by the door, just in case, and took a seat, legs crossed and back against the door. "Bad day?"

Echoing slightly through the still-closed stall door, it all came rushing out at once in her hoarse voice, "I was just trying to help them. And I came to Hogwarts and I thought it was going to be different here than at my old school. They told me it was the best school. I thought everyone else would be smart and want to learn and we could learn about magic together! But none of them want to know anything, they're just as bad as the kids at my old school, and," her voice rose into a wail, "none of them want to be my friends either!" She let out a couple of choking sobs, but seemed like she was too cried out to do much more.

I was really going to have to harangue Percy for not doing a better job mentoring this girl. It sounded like she had problems he was perfect to empathize with. I didn't understand nearly as well, but I also didn't have anything better to say, so I just shared, "It's my birthday today. And nobody's said anything to me all day. It's been killing me. And, you know—I just realized—I don't actually think I told anyone when my birthday is. McGonagall might not even know."

That got a coughing laugh from the girl in the stall, and she said, "Happy birthday, Harry."

"Thanks," that gave me a moment to think of what to say to her. "I don't really know what it's like for you. When I was your age, I'd just been taken in by a new foster father. He was teaching me magic, but it was just me for the first little bit. So I didn't have a chance to make friends. When I eventually got–" I didn't really want to say Elaine was my foster sister, since that would be weird given our eventual relationship. "When he took on another student, she and I became friends because we didn't exactly have anyone else to be friends with. But when we went to muggle school classes, we couldn't make friends, because we couldn't tell them about magic.

"And, it turns out, he had basically kidnapped me just before I would have gotten my Hogwarts letter."

"That… that's awful," she admitted.

I went on, "I'm not trying to say that I have it worse than you, or anything." I may have  _ thought  _ it, but I wasn't going to  _ say  _ it. "I'm just… I'm having a pretty bad day too, and I wanted you to know that you aren't alone, wanting to just hide and wait for it all to blow over."

We didn't talk for a minute, and finally, she let herself out of the stall so she could look at me. She was still carrying her book satchel and her face was red and puffy from crying all day. She realized what I'd done before sitting, whispered, " _ scourgify _ ," with a wand gesture, and took her own seat on the tile across from me. Finally, she asked, "How am I going to make friends? I don't think I can  _ do _ this for seven years."

I sighed. I'd obviously thought about it, because Percy had the same problems. "Do you want the easy answer or the hard one?"

Despite how smart she was, the girl was a born Gryffindor, and she'd  _ always  _ go for extra credit. "The hard answer, please." She tensed up, as if physically preparing for me to lay some harsh truths on her.

Nodding, I asked, "Why do you need to answer  _ every  _ question?"

What I'd said barely seemed to make sense to her. "Because I know the answer?" she eventually ventured.

"What if you just waited to see if anyone else knew the answer first, and only raised your hand if you saw nobody else was going to?"

She still didn't seem to get it. "But then… the professors wouldn't know that I know the answer."

"Hermione,  _ everyone  _ knows you know the answer. You do extra homework. You give the right answer when called on. You could barely participate for the rest of the year and you'd still be top of your class. What are you  _ actually  _ afraid of happening if you give someone else a chance to answer a question?"

She thought about it for a minute, rather than giving me the first answer that came to mind. Finally, she admitted, "I didn't really understand that there was a magical culture. I thought everyone here would be like me: muggleborn. And as soon as I got to school, they started making fun of me. I had to show them that I'm not just some girl that doesn't know anything about magic. Not just some mudblood."

"So you don't want them to act like you're stupid? You want to prove that you're smart?" She nodded to my question, so I asked, "How do you think you treat Ron and Seamus? Do you act like  _ they're  _ stupid?"

An instant objection about to drop out of her lips, she caught herself and admitted, "I don't  _ mean _ to. I just don't understand why they don't get things that are so  _ easy _ ."

I shook my head, wondering at how someone could be so smart but miss the obvious. "Hermione, I haven't checked with the professors to be sure, but I'm pretty sure you're a  _ genius _ at this. Stuff that seems easy to you is  _ hard  _ for everyone else. You've been doing this for two months and you seem to understand concepts that took me  _ years _ to really get, and I'm pretty smart.

"If you just sat quietly in class and only spoke when spoken to, but turned in all your homework and kept doing spells right the first try, all the other first-years would just be intimidated by how smart you are. But when you have to constantly show off in class and act like you're their teacher, they feel like you're making fun of them. They feel like  _ they're  _ too dumb to be at the school."

She nodded with appropriate gravity at my pronouncements, but as soon as I finished talking, she grinned and said, "You think I'm a genius?"

"At magic, yes… at understanding how to make friends with your dumb-dumb classmates, no," I smiled and stuck my tongue out at her.

That got a giggle, but she asked, "Then what should I do?"

"I assume that, like you said, even if they're not as smart as you, you don't want to go through seven years just ignoring them and doing your own thing?" She nodded, so I told her basically what I'd told Percy, "Then you've got to try to be interested in whatever weird wizard sports or games they're interested in… and not make them feel like you think they're dumb.

"Which means waiting until they  _ ask  _ for your help, and not over-helping." I thought about it for a second, "It probably also helps if there's something they're better at than you that they can do for  _ you _ . How do you feel about being 'Hermione, who's great at magic but terrible on a broom, so we're working really hard to train her up to play quidditch some day'?"

"Ugh, flying," she frowned, then giggled when I made the same face. "Yeah, I guess I can try that. Can I ask you for more help if I think I'm still getting it wrong?"

"Yeah, sure," I said, then smiled and pointed at her, "See! You're already getting it!"

She nodded, "You know, what you said makes a lot of sense in light of an article I was reading in a psychology magazine my parents had in their waiting room, and it was talking about 'reciprocity' and it's starting to make a lot more sense, because–"

I put up a finger to stop her from getting all the way wound up and said, "Can you finish that at dinner? We're missing the Halloween feast."

"Oh, right!" she said. "I didn't actually eat lunch and I guess I  _ am _ starving."

I levered my gangly limbs up from the floor and unlocked the bathroom door, "Then let's see what kind of strange wizarding foods are at this feast. I mean, it's pumpkin juice with every meal, so at Halloween they'll have to have, what, double-pumpkin juice?"

We were laughing walking toward the great hall when both of us turned up our noses at once at the awful smell of something living that had  _ never _ bathed. In the quiet, I heard the sound of snuffling, and heavy footsteps coming from up ahead. I grabbed Hermione by the shoulder and pulled both of us to hide behind one of the omnipresent suits of armor nearby. I had my staff ready and my shield bracelet out, and, behind me, Hermione drew her wand.

From around a corner, a creature emerged so straight out of  _ The Hobbit _ that I expected it to be dragging a sack full of dwarves. The gray-skinned cave troll was taller even than Hagrid, and had to lean over to avoid bashing its head on the high ceiling. As it slowly strolled by, snuffling, it sniffed at a piece of cloth in the hand that wasn't carrying a whole tree trunk as a club. "It can't be," whispered Hermione. I thought she was talking about a monster being in the school, but she said, "I think that's the jumper I lost last month."

The troll definitely seemed to be going more or less straight for the bathroom where she'd spent the whole day, which wouldn't make any sense unless it was tracking her by smell. Fortunately, it hadn't caught the fresher scent from where we were hiding. It was only a matter of time, though, so I waited for it to actually enter the bathroom and then we were going to book it down the hall toward the professors.

Unfortunately for the plan of running away, as soon as it kicked open the door of the bathroom, I heard the unmistakable sounds of Seamus Finnegan shouting, "Oy! That's the girl's toilet!"

Not far behind him was Ron Weasley, who said, "Do you think Hermione's still in there?"

And, finally, Neville yelled, "We have to save her!"

Let it never be said that 11-year-olds aren't  _ deceptively fast _ when they're on a mission. Before either Hermione or I could say something to stop them, the three boys had sprinted down the hallway and were about to get into a fight with a cave troll that was so big they'd have to stand on each other's shoulders for any of them to look it in the eye.

##  An Exclusive Club

Motioning Hermione to stay back, I ran out after the boys. Seamus had already yelled, "Oy! Granger! Ya in there?"

That she yelled, "No, I'm back here!" from behind me certainly distracted the boys, and caught the attention of the troll. All four turned down the hall toward us, and Seamus didn't notice as the troll wound up to casually splatter him with the giant slab of wood it was wielding as a club.

Not having much time to think, I yelled, " _ Carpe retractum! _ " while jerking my staff back like a fishing pole. A beam of light briefly connected the end of the staff and the Irish boy, pulling him rapidly toward me just in time to dodge the beast's swing. It cracked loudly against the stone wall, and large chunks of brick clattered to the floor.

As Seamus's momentum made him baseball slide down the corridor from where I released the spell, Ron and Neville had a little more situational awareness and turned back to the troll, trying to spread out and get out of range of its club. Unfortunately, while the ceiling was too low for an overhead smash, the hallway was a main thoroughfare and just wide enough for multiple children to walk to class at once. That meant the troll had room to swing but we didn't have much room to get around it, and that they were backing up toward me and in the way of anything major I tried to do.

Having a nagging worry, I yelled, " _ Stupefy! _ " and tossed off a stunner, which would have trouble missing. Unfortunately, as expected, the red light splashed harmlessly off of it. How magic resistant  _ was  _ its skin, anyway? With two boys still in the way, I didn't want to risk grabbing my blasting rod and trying to hit its limits. The troll was easily keeping pace with the backpedaling boys, so I tried shouting, " _ Ventus! _ " and sending a blast of wind along the top of the corridor.

While the wind did more than the stunner, the troll was quite heavy and was only a bit distracted. I had slowed my initial sprint when I had to save Seamus, but I'd still been slowly moving forward, and I finally got ahead of the boys at about the point of another suit of armor eternally guarding the hallway. The two miniature Gryffindors took the opportunity to actually turn and run once they realized I could block it. Now I just had to figure out how I was actually going to block it.

I'm not the most agile human being on the planet, as I have a lot of arm and leg to manage, but the troll heavily telegraphed its swing and I was able to duck and cover my head as its swing instead connected with the suit of armor. All the plates scattered around the hallway, with a couple of chunks painfully bouncing off of one of my ribs. While the club was committed, I scrambled past the troll down the hallway, hoping it didn't realize it could just kick me while its club was going the wrong way.

Successfully turning the troll around, I could see that the four first-years had stopped to watch not far enough down the hallway. "Hey ugly!" I said, trying to get its attention. It tossed a look my way, but took a sniff of the air, threw Hermione's presumed sweater to the other side of the hall, and started to move toward the girl. Annoyed, the scattered suit of armor gave me an idea. " _ Oppugno! _ " I cast, making the junk, as well as the fragments of shattered wall, swirl up and pelt into the troll.

That at least got its attention, and I hadn't really accounted for how fast it could move when it was annoyed or what I was going to do next. I managed to scramble back fast enough to miss one swing, then another, and even a third, but now the troll was going at a run. I had just enough time to crouch down and put up a shield before the club caught me.

Now, my shield is not a spells-only defense. Through a lot of hard work, it's good against physical impacts as well. Unfortunately, the worst I'd ever really tested it on was magically-accelerated baseballs. It was not quite as effective against the better part of a tree trunk. It popped my shield, and if the backlash hadn't stunned me, being hit by the club would have. Fortunately, I'd slowed it by a lot. Unfortunately, it still had plenty of inertia. Rather than pulping me in place, it worked more like a lacrosse stick, scooping me up and flinging me into the wall. My staff clattered away from me as I slumped to the floor, dazed and worrying about what I'd broken.

I wasn't sure I would be able to do anything in time to stop the backswing from finishing me off, but the brave tiny Gryffindors decided to distract the beast. Three of them were shooting off whatever beginner's hexes they'd learned so far, while Seamus had run up and grabbed some of the detritus of the armor and wall to throw. None of it made any real difference to the troll, but it was reminded there were other threats and turned to face them.

From my stupor on the ground, I tried to collect myself but could only watch the kids fight the looming troll. Ron suddenly had an idea and cast, " _ Wingardium leviosa! _ " I'd find out later that Hermione was very impressed that he got it right, since it had apparently been the lesson he'd blown earlier that started the fight between the kids. And he cast it on the club, which I should have thought of. Unfortunately, while that might have worked if the monster had a loose grip, it was more than capable of hanging onto the club against a first-year's spell, though it had to work at it for a moment.

I started to groggily try to get to my staff, but my arms didn't really seem to want to obey my commands. And maybe my eyes were going weird, because I could have sworn Hermione was  _ charging  _ at the troll. With a mighty smash it brought down its club on the hallway floor, but the little girl had managed to duck and run between its legs. It seemed inclined to deal with her, but the boys started back up with their assault.

Hermione checked to make sure I was moving, seemed to realize I wasn't going to help in the next few seconds, and picked up my staff. The focus was almost twice her height, but she managed to get a decent grip on it, muttered a couple of incantations to get a feel for the difference to her wand, and planted her feet. As the troll was dangerously close to taking out all three boys with a single hall-wide swing, the muggleborn girl shouted, " _ Wingardium leviosa! _ "

My staff was primarily built to handle magic involving motion, and the levitation charm certainly qualified. With that much surface area with which to work, I'd been able to make it more or less idiot-proof, since I'm the biggest idiot I know. And Hermione had been a very attentive student in my class, even though she was perfectly competent with a wand.  _ Unlike  _ her wand, whose magical capacity would grow as she did, the staff could focus a lot more of her magic toward that spell, and it was enough to rip the club out of the troll's hands. Awkwardly swinging the staff around in front of her, the club followed her movements, buffeting into the troll repeatedly and then finally making a very solid couple of hits into its face. With a grunt of confusion, the troll fell, unconscious, to the floor.

I could tell I'd managed to shake most of the cobwebs out of my head because I did  _ not  _ say the joke that had come to mind about Hermione grabbing my staff without asking.

Of course, barely ten seconds later, the professors finally came running up, having heard the commotion. McGonagall and Flitwick saw the boys first, and she clearly took in the situation and realized how close five students had been to getting killed. Fear for her charges turned into anger, and she started lighting into the boys, who were apparently supposed to be in their dormitory.

"Excuse me? Professor?" Hermione interrupted, having dropped my staff and started wringing her hands at the worry she was going to get in trouble. She sounded a little tired from focusing so much of her magic at once, but still managed a classic run-on sentence, explaining, "Only Harry's hurt and probably needs to get to the hospital wing, because he was escorting me down to dinner late when the boys came to warn us about the troll and unfortunately, it found us all first."

I could see the boys perk up that Hermione had  _ not  _ turned them in for rushing at a troll that wasn't actually threatening us at all. McGonagall hadn't seemed to realize that I wasn't just sitting down to relax, turned white, and ran over. "Can you move, Harry?" she asked. I chuckled that she was worried enough to use my first name.

"I think I'll be okay," I insisted, possibly a little slurred. "Should've put cushioning charms on the walls," I mumbled, mostly to myself, thinking about how I could have done better.

"Did you defeat the troll?" she asked.

She sounded so impressed, I hated to disabuse her, but I couldn't steal the credit. "Just distracted it. Hermione got it." I looked over to Flitwick and told him, "Didn't they just learn the levitation charm today, professor? Hermione and Ron both did it perfectly."

McGonagall was going to levitate me to the hospital wing, but I grabbed my staff and insisted on limping there with her as my escort. We left the kids giving an edited version of the story as Flitwick wanted to hear details before awarding points. The boys were already embellishing it in excited voices. All McGonagall said on the way to the hospital wing was scoffing, "Gryffindors."

I could tell there was tremendous pride hidden in her complaint.


	8. Stone Faced 8: Blood Wards

##  Cheering Section

While I hadn't actually  _ enjoyed  _ spending so much of my birthday in the hospital wing, at least I wasn't in there for too long. A few healing spells and a night of observation, and I'd been hobbling around the castle in time to get most of my weekend. I'd used a fair amount of it to look up tactics for fighting magic-resistant creatures. While it had all worked out, I didn't really want to make getting saved by 11-year-olds a habit.

Between our talk and the fight, though, Hermione had made a lot of progress over the week. She'd seemed to be fitting in much better at meals and in the common room, she and Seamus had gotten along in my foci class on the next Thursday, and as we all gathered in the quidditch stands the next Saturday, I saw her crunched in with all the other first-years. She was sitting next to two of her roommates, and I overheard one telling her, "Really, your hair has amazing  _ body _ , you just need to get it under control." She gestured at some magazine she was holding, "Have you heard about Sleekeazy?" I could barely tell Hermione was using all her willpower not to tell them it was stupid, and instead let them tell her all about whatever it was they wanted to do for her.

Meanwhile, I was further up the stands, where Percy had claimed the edge closest to the Ravenclaw contingent so Penny could sit with us and still support her house. That we were all hunched over books rather than paying much attention to the match hopefully didn't matter to the sports fans.

"I still think the patronus charm, while a useful spell to know, is the wrong direction for the project," asserted Percy.

"It's not that I disagree," explained the blond Ravenclaw, "but until we understand it enough to cast it, we can't totally rule out that it might have some use. Of course, going practical it would also help to have a dementor to practice on…"

"I'll leave that to you two," I grumbled, opposite Penny with Percy in the middle. "I've had enough of them to last me for a while."

The two of them both looked about to argue, then remembered why I'd have a problem and held their tongues. After a minute, my roommate suggested, "We should reexamine our assumptions. We were not presented the task of a better way to deal with dementors, but a more general-purpose spell that can harm incorporeal, hostile spirits."

"And we  _ do  _ have Peeves to practice on," grinned Penny. "You're not wrong that a patronus is probably a dead end. As I understand it, it works due to their feeding habits, not their physical state. Though I really want to learn it for the bonus points on the OWLs. We need something that–"

She was cut off by the roar of the crowd as Amber Noel scored her first goal for Gryffindor. The head girl had agreed to play for the team as long as she didn't have to come to many practices, which Oliver had grudgingly agreed to when his other options were so limited. The second-year, Bell, had been assigned seeker when no one else was any good at it. My other roommate had been complaining about his difficulties for the last week as the match got closer and closer. I'd tried to nod appropriately sympathetically, but I thought the guy was still taking this  _ way  _ too seriously.

I passed my project partners the book I'd found as the cheering died down, and when Penny didn't seem to need to continue her thought, said, "I've been looking into ways to fight magic-resistant creatures…"

"To be ready for the next troll?" Percy asked, quirking an eyebrow in the closest he usually came to showing he was trying to make a joke. It was progress, at least. He hadn't really processed well that he'd lost control of so many of the first-years, including his brother, and it had come so close to tragedy. I'd had to stop him twice from chewing Ron out about it. I was working on getting him to tell the boy he was impressed by his bravery, but to get an adult the next time. For such a big and loving family, the Weasleys seemed determined to be mad at each other as much as possible.

"Pretty much," I agreed. "You're  _ sure  _ it's unusual to encounter horrible monsters in the castle instead of just out in the forest?" Hermione seemed to have forgotten that the troll had her sweater and was making a beeline for her, but I hadn't.  _ Maybe  _ it just found it discarded somewhere, but I thought it was more likely that someone had brought it into the castle and put it on the scent. But who would even  _ want _ to murder a first-year with no political connections?

Nobody took me up on my barb, but after a moment of flipping through the book, Penny suggested, "That's a thought. Maybe we can look at the concepts of magic resistance and incorporeality in general."

Picking up on what she was saying, Percy excitedly added, "Brilliant! What is it about troll skin that causes it to resist magic? Why does magic energy have such a hard time making contact with a spectral form?"

Loud booing suddenly rocked our side of the stands followed by cheering from the other as the twins' friend Lee announced, "And Flint with a blatant foul of Spinnet to take the quaffle and score a goal. But Madam Hooch didn't see it so it doesn't count, I guess."

With the Slytherin stands cheering, I looked over and noticed Draco Malfoy sitting between his parents, who I'd seen before at the train. They seemed to be looking my way, and Draco talked and gestured toward me as their stands settled down. Maybe what I'd noticed was that I was being talked about. I made eye contact across the pitch and waved at the family. I'd kind of meant it sarcastically, in a "it's not polite to talk about people" way, but Draco waved back and his father nodded.

The game eventually ended close on goals but the Slytherin's much older seeker outracing Bell on her first attempt at the job. I still couldn't figure out why an entire sport hinged so much on one team member, but I was still making appropriately-consoling noises to Oliver the next morning at breakfast when a large and important-looking owl dropped off a fancy-looking letter for me.

_ Mr. Dresden, _

_ My son suggested I might have some information you'd be interested in. I have my own curiosity about you, and would be pleased to invite you to a lunch conversation at your next Hogsmeade weekend. Noon at the Three Broomsticks? _

_ Lucius Malfoy _

Oliver, who I'd  _ thought  _ was distracted by his latest recounting of Flint's unpunished foul was instead reading over my shoulder. "Be careful with that one," he said, a little too loudly, "the Malfoys are too rich and too dangerous."

I shrugged, "I mentioned to Draco that my mother was in his house, and he thought his parents might be able to tell me something about her."

Percy, tagged into the conversation by Oliver's sharing it with everyone nearby, leaned across the table to read the letter upside-down. Still not having given up his head for politics, he argued, "Malfoy is a powerful patron, if one is willing to to 'play quidditch' as they say." Of course, the Weasley prefect made air quotes with his fingers. "He has the ear of the minister and the school board, and those are just what everyone knows about."

"And he was a death eater," Oliver added, matter-of-factly.

The redhead looked about to argue, but then nodded to concede the point. " _ Legally _ , he was found to have been under the imperius curse. But admittedly, his voice is prominent one for the purebloods and my father believes he bought his way out of scrutiny." He paused to fix me with a glare, "Yet, a wealthy patron is sometimes worth a bit of moral equivocation for those without abundant means."

"Basically Nazis, though, right?" butted in Denbright, one of the sixth-year boys sitting nearby. I assumed he wasn't a pureblood himself. It was interesting to see that most of the nearby purebloods didn't seem to even know what a Nazi was.

Percy, at least, seemed to get it, because he admitted, "I  _ do  _ find it interesting that he has an interest in a half-blood. Again, according to my father, he has called my family blood traitors. I  _ thought  _ he tried to associate only with other politically-aligned purebloods."

"More reason to find out why he's so willing to talk to me," I argued. I wasn't exactly going to explain that my godmother was his sister-in-law, and that probably went a long way.

"Just be careful," suggested Oliver. "We'll set up in the inn ourselves, so we can help if you get into trouble."

While I was worried that brash friends that were waiting to start an argument were more likely to  _ get  _ me into trouble, I appreciated the sentiment. "Sounds good to me." Deliberately changing the subject, I asked, "Now explain to me again why the scores didn't pull apart like they were supposed to before the snitch showed up…"

##  Blood Politics

"Did you know the muggle government of Britain employs over a hundred thousand officers of the law?" I wasn't sure I'd precisely  _ invited _ the platinum-blond-haired man onto this topic, but he obviously enjoyed it. "About the same again in the military. Their population is approximately a thousand times ours, so if we needed policing in the same numbers we'd need over 100 aurors. Perhaps 200 if you consider them our army as well…"

He paused to take a sip of his wine, waiting for me to prompt him. "I'm guessing there are significantly fewer?" I said, just to keep this from drawing out.

"Indeed. Only a tad over fifty, at last count, with a few retirees that can be called in for emergencies." Lucius Malfoy clearly thought this was a slam dunk condemnation of something.

I thought about it from his point of view, as someone very involved in the ministry. But I also knew that the majority of wizards tried to stay out of the way of the ministry. "What about crimes against muggles that go unreported? Maybe wizarding criminals are just picking easier targets. It's not like muggle criminals have a whole giant population of their own outsiders to steal from."

A slight glimmer in his eyes like I'd caught the man out, then he turned it back to his own purposes. "And yet, with this whole population of opportunity, so many muggleborn turn their attention to trying to make changes to the wizarding world."

"It might have something to do with having to spend at least five years of their lives immersed in wizarding culture or they'll have their magic bound," I argued. "Also, that aurors can show up from nowhere at any time and throw them in prison. I suspect most muggleborn would be happy to ignore the wizarding world if it would ignore them." I wasn't exactly getting agitated, but after we'd finished an admittedly nice lunch in a private room, all of which he'd paid for, it seemed like Malfoy had started trying to recruit me or something. Rather than him changing the subject again, I tried to focus on what he'd been getting at, "But, are you saying that you don't have a problem with muggles, you just wish they'd leave you alone?"

"Well put, Mr. Dresden," he allowed. "I'm simply trying to dispel the notions I'm certain are still rife in Gryffindor, and likely Hogwarts in general. The push for blood purity is an important but flawed political shorthand. It's more a question of culture than birth. I understand that you're a powerful young wizard, despite being half-blood, and Draco tells me a muggleborn girl is currently first in his class. The Dark Lord  _ himself  _ was a half-blood, and he was killed by a half-blood after being weakened by another very talented muggleborn witch. I breed exotic animals as a hobby, and I wouldn't have much success if I didn't have an understanding of inherited genetics. Clearly, while two magical parents are more likely to breed true, once the recessive magical trait appears in any child, parentage doesn't seem to have much effect on total power.

"Unfortunately, the majority of traditional wizards don't have quite the same understanding of the sciences. They rally around being pureblood, thinking it assures power instead of just being a signifier of a shared cultural heritage. No, the problem with muggleborn and muggle-raised is not the capacity for magic, it's their capacity to understand our culture."

Right. The guy that wouldn't have looked at all out of place in an SS uniform was claiming  _ he _ wasn't racist, he just found a bunch of racists to be a really useful voting base. Between the years in a Chicago orphanage seeing how my non-white peers were treated and then the not-so-warm welcome certain people in Britain had given me as a half-blood, I wasn't exactly willing to give him much credit for his tap dancing. But he  _ still  _ hadn't actually told me anything about my mother, so I managed to not just tell him how full of shit he was. Instead, I asked, "Did my mother fit in? I don't think McGregor is a pureblood family name."

"A half-blood," he allowed, with a slight smirk for me trying to force the conversation to what he'd invited me for. "But that makes my point exactly. She was a year ahead of me in Slytherin, so I had ample opportunity to observe her. Rather than railing against wizarding tradition, as many muggleborn and half-bloods do, she sought to grow within them. I think you will find that the non-purebloods who have problems in our society are precisely the ones that bring in radical muggle ideas and expect our world to accommodate them. Those that decide to embrace their magic and the culture that entails fit in so fully that only tell-tale last names would let a casual observer tell a difference from long-established families."

Someone willing to get along with conservative wizarding values didn't sound like what Hagrid had told me about my mother. "I heard she actually upset several of the professors. Left school early because she was pushy, and wouldn't accept things that were meant to be secret."

"Ah!" Malfoy exclaimed, seemingly genuinely excited by this information. "I'd wondered if anyone in the castle would have explained even that much to you. You see, this is where we come to the crux of the issue. How much do you know about British wizarding politics?" I shrugged that it wasn't much, so he continued, "The headmaster of Hogwarts heads up a political faction that he unironically refers to as 'the Light,' hoping to cast his opponents as representing darkness. It's inarguably a solid strategic move that has had Wizengamot members and voters lining up for years to side with him, even when they haven't looked closely at his policies.

"Your mother was more allied with a different political faction, one of whose tenets is that arbitrarily limiting magic study is terrible for innovation. Margaret didn't oppose wizarding culture, she opposed a philosophy that whole swaths of spells are too dangerous for students to even know about, much less learn to cast. That philosophy is, unfortunately, nearly universal in educational institutions." He paused for a beat, then added, "I suspect it has to do with seeing too many inadequate students and fearing that allowing permissions to the brightest of students would soon have incompetents casting Unforgivables in the hallways."

"I feel like I know both sides of the whole argument about what counts as a 'dark' spell," I countered. Quirrell kept bringing it up, and Justin had certainly had an attitude about it that I'd reevaluated heavily after his betrayal. I remembered how my godmother had been so interested in teaching me something that Dumbledore didn't seem to believe in, and took a guess, "What about the fae?"

With a slight grimace, Lucius admitted, "Yes, while treating with the fair folk is considered a risk even amongst those with our political leanings, we'd never seek to outright forbid it the way the self-proclaimed 'Light' would. Your mother became so invested in it that she was often referred to as 'Margaret LeFay' in a play on the name of the ancient enchantress."

That was at least a piece more information, and I gave him the feeder question he had actually been looking for. "So what you're saying is that my mother was only considered rebellious by Dumbledore's faction, but was asking perfectly reasonable questions from your side's point of view?"

"Indeed. And, to my regret, this is where her family ties  _ did  _ prove a limitation for her. Her friends at school who believed similarly had influential parents and other relatives who would intervene if they were treated especially unfairly by the staff, but Margaret had no such buffer in between herself and the disapproval of the staff. In fact, I understand that her magical parent was more aligned with Dumbledore's faction and made life at school unbearable for the girl. Hence, as soon as she could leave without having her magic bound, she did."

"Her magical parent?" I asked. "That would be my grandmother?"

He gave me a predatory look, one that I'd eventually realize meant he hadn't been sure no one had told me who my magical ancestors were. Now he held the ability to connect me to my family. I'd unfortunately just given Lucius Malfoy leverage, and that led him into a seeming non-sequitur. "Mr. Dresden, now that I've explained the two major political ideologies, do you think you fall more on the side of your mother, or of Dumbledore?"

Another thing I realized later was that this was a sales pitch to get me agree to being on his side. I wouldn't have taken him up on it if I'd realized, but my gut response was just, "Honestly, I don't give a damn about British wizarding politics. I'm heading back to America sooner or later. Hopefully sooner."

It was hard to figure out what he thought about that, but he'd probably take neutrality over protesting that I was solidly allied with his opponents. "Fair enough, Mr. Dresden. I so rarely get the opportunity to deal with wizards who have such good reason for being disinterested in politics. I'll think on whether I can provide assistance getting you back to your father's homeland."

He began to stand, so I realized I was being dismissed with only a tiny amount of information about my mother, but at least I got a free lunch out of the deal. I hated politicians. Trying not to sound too annoyed at his bait and switch to trying to recruit me, I managed, "I appreciate the consideration. And thank you for lunch."

"Think nothing of it, Mr. Dresden," he said as he made his way from the room, still seeming to be unsure of how to handle me in the future.

##  Circles within Circles

"I had not expected him to make a full recruitment pitch right from the start," admitted Percy, after I'd finished summarizing my conversation with Malfoy. Percy, Penny, Oliver, and I were around a table out in the Three Broomsticks' common room. "I wonder why he abandoned his usual tactic of slow patronage to build a dependent relationship first."

Penny suggested, "Maybe he didn't think a few small favors would make much difference to someone who already has a relationship with Dumbledore? Risking the hard sell to lock down your loyalty before you had months more at Hogwarts to find out that his political faction is called 'the Dark' for more than just Dumbledore's faction."

Percy nodded, "Makes sense to me. In particular, Gryffindor that go into politics are almost always on the side of the Light, when it comes to Wizengamot votes. Perhaps he attempted a slow play with some of our housemates before and it never worked."

Oliver hadn't really said much while the two prefects had been helping me work out the political side of the conversation that had mostly gone over my head in the moment. Especially once I'd mentioned my mother's fae connection, he'd quieted up. He finally asked, "The fair folk are real?"

Penny answered, "Well, there are obviously the fairies, pixies, doxies, leprechauns, imps and the like that are covered in defense and magical creatures classes. But I was curious about that, too. I've heard about the fair folk in stories, but we haven't covered them in school."

I considered how to explain, since I'd left out any mention of my godmother to the three, including when summarizing my conversation with Lucius. Finally, I explained, "Like Malfoy mentioned, dealing with the aes sidhe—the people of the mounds, or the fair folk—is strongly discouraged. It was only recently that I figured out that…  _ one of my tutors _ wasn't supposed to be telling me as much as she did about them.

"As I understand it, wizards basically figured out how to lock them out of our world centuries ago, because they were so dangerous. The tiniest ones, like the fairies, can still slip through. A bunch of magical creatures are actually native to the lands of the fae as well. But there's always a worry that wizards will figure out how to contact the more powerful ones. They really like to make deals that usually wind up being way worse for you than you think. And contacting them in that way might make it possible for them to slip through as well. Or at least they'll trick you into doing something bad for humans as your part of the deal."

"So they don't teach us about them because the fewer people that know, the fewer that can risk letting them back into our world?" asked the Ravenclaw prefect, clearly annoyed. "I can see why your mother didn't agree with that. Security through obscurity never works."

Percy asked, "How sure are you that this is real, and not some folklore your tutor sold you on?"

"If it's fake, it's not just his tutor that believed it," Oliver interjected. "My mother seemed to believe something similar. I thought it was folklore too. But it would make sense. There's even a faerie mound right outside of Hogsmeade she showed me a few times."

"Really?" asked Penny, excited. "Then as proper empiricists, we should go take a look!"

Percy didn't exactly seem sold, but he was never going to pass up a chance to go take a long walk with Penny, so the four of us left the inn and headed in the way Oliver suggested. "If I remember it right, it's a left off the road as soon as you can see the Shrieking Shack."

Oliver's memories proved accurate. We'd only been walking for a minute into the treeline next to the road out of town before we found a clearing with a large mound dominating it. Lifted off the ground by a foot-high ring of stones, the dome was several yards across and covered in oddly-even green grass. A classic fairy ring of mushrooms crowned the hill, poking out of the grass. The whole thing seemed out of place amid the forest that was dipping quickly toward winter. It wasn't even covered with the fallen leaves that blanketed the rest of the wood, and the temperature warmed subtly close to the mound.

"I don't suppose the villagers keep this mowed?" I asked. The points on the grass just seemed to indicate that it grew to a few inches and then stopped, rather than being kept even by groundskeepers. Oliver shook his head and the four of us spread out around the mound, damp fallen leaves squelching under our boots. Through unspoken agreement, no one had gone clambering on the hill yet.

Percy and Penny quickly found old runes carved into the stones and started trying to work out their purpose, while Oliver seemed to be having an almost religious experience. We'd spread out around the hill, as well, so I was the only one that noticed a flicker of motion back toward town, like someone in dark clothing moving behind a tree. I fancied I would have heard the subtle pop of someone apparating away from that hiding place if it weren't for the instantaneous crack of incoming apparition. A dark-robed figure appeared at the top of the hill, centered in the ring of mushrooms.

To his credit, Oliver was in a guard stance almost instantly with his wand out. Percy was distracted by Penny, who shrieked and kicked backwards from where they were stooped over, reading the stones. It was all the bookish Weasley could do to catch her from falling into the leaves. But both of them would have been dead if it had been an enemy appearing.

Admittedly, I had a moment of fight-or-flight before I recognized the feminine silhouette and familiar black hair curling out of the shadowed hood. I'd also seen her wear that cloak before when she was trying to be sneaky. So I either scared or impressed the hell out of my classmates when I just said, "Hello, Godmother."

"Oh, Harry, not even an 'avaunt, hooded shade!' for my troubles?" snarked Bellatrix. "It's classic for situations like this. When your mother first came here, she had better words."

"I guess you'd know, since you were right there with her," I rejoined. "Hogsmeade weekends start third year, right? Did you find it together when you were 13, or did it take you longer?"

"Lucius wouldn't have told you," she whined, her voice pitching into the annoying baby talk she sometimes did. "Could it be… yearbooks?" I gave her a slight nod to admit how she'd been found out. "But you haven't mentioned to your friends… no diagnostic spells!" she shrieked, noticing Penny waving her wand. I was probably the only one that could hear my godmother's hissed, " _ Expelliarmus _ !" as she wandlessly cast at the Ravenclaw girl.

The wave of disarming magic was impressive, but probably wouldn't have been strong enough had Penny been at all prepared. However, her wand was dragged from her hand with a surprised squeak and flew into Bellatrix's hand.

"Hmm, walnut," my godmother said, examining the wand in her gloved hand. "I knew of another smart girl with such a wand. It's good for Harry to have smart friends." She threw the wand back Penny's way for her to catch. "Turn it on me again and I'll break all your fingers."

Seeing Oliver tensing trying to decide whether that was a prelude to a fight, I tried to get the madwoman to the point she'd followed us out of town to make. "Is there something I can do for you today, godmother?"

"Since you're not trailing Lucius but you're here, I assume he mentioned your mother's interest in the fae but did not secure your allegiance?" I nodded, and she giggled madly. "He fancies himself a better salesman than he is. Let's have a lesson, since you've made the trip, then." Over her shoulder, careful to not reveal her face from within the depths of her hood, she snapped out, "Smart girl! How does magical translocation work?"

"Well…" Penny began, then frowned, "I don't think I've ever seen the theory explained. Maybe they don't teach the theory until they teach us to apparate?"

"You don't find that suspicious?" Bellatrix asked, in a slight sing song. "Harry's mother certainly did. Harry, can  _ you  _ work it out?"

I thought I saw where she was going with this. "Does it use the Nevernever somehow? I know the faerie realm doesn't map directly to ours."

"Exactly. Oh, you're a student at Hogwarts now! Ten points to… oh… Gryffindor. I never thought I'd be saying that." The others had started to drop their guard as the cloaked madwoman on the hill seemed to be giving a lesson instead of attacking them. Little did they realize how quickly she could turn a lecture  _ into _ an attack. But, for now, she continued to explain, "Before they raised the wall between the worlds, wizards would tear gates into the Nevernever and walk the ways within. Much faster than even riding, if you could figure out correspondences between points.

"These old hill forts are called raths, and they were bound with ancient spells to be stable connections between  _ here _ and  _ there _ . It also made it easier to open a way. They used to be all over, a travel network nearly two millennia before the floo." She turned slowly away from me to take in the others, who were having just the weirdest but most engaging history lesson they'd ever had at Hogwarts. The two prefects were rapt from the lecture, while Oliver still seemed to think she was some faerie creature and not just a dangerously deranged dark witch.

Percy couldn't help but contribute to a classroom discussion, even if the classroom was a faerie mound in the middle of the woods. "The veil! It blocks travel into this other world but retains the magic of these ways?"

Bellatrix giggled, "With the hair it must be a Weasley! Those aren't usually so sharp. Be careful you make sure he only cuts the ones you want him to cut, Harry. But, yes, you've gotten it. They didn't just wall off the Nevernever, they made sure that it could serve as a road as well. Apparition. Portkeys. The Floo. All of it is just tapping into a much bigger spell and letting you use the  _ ways  _ without even knowing where they go.

"And if that wall came tumbling down… no more teleporting witches and wizards." That pronouncement was threatening enough that it stopped several questions that Percy and Penny were clearly winding up to ask. She finally stopped her slow turning to fix me with a very pointed stare, "But, until that happens, raths still make an excellent apparition point for going long distances."

And with that last piece of advice, she proved it by apparating away.

##  Detained

Fortunately, everyone had seemed to accept my explanation that my godmother was a crazy and powerful witch who'd apparently been friends with my mother, and that her "lessons" were often hard to follow and painful. All of this was true, but what I'd danced around was that I knew who she was. Percy, at the very least, would probably feel obligated to report that he'd spotted Bellatrix Lestrange. I wasn't ready to get caught in between whatever agenda she had and Dumbledore.

Plus her continued patronage was dangerous but likely necessary. I became especially convinced of this by the second weekend of December, when McGonagall had posted a sign-up sheet in the Gryffindor common room. It was a list to fill in for everyone staying at Hogwarts over the winter break. I'd planned on just ignoring it and seeing if they'd let me get on the train to London. She caught my eye across the common room and I wandered over. "Mr. Dresden, I've gone ahead and added your name to the sheet," she explained.

"Why?" I asked, not thinking of anything else to say, then covering with, "I was planning to visit with friends over the break." I actually wasn't, not having anyone I trusted to let me out to accomplish what I needed to, but it seemed like a vague enough excuse.

"I'm sorry, but with a certain individual's interest in following you when you're outside of Hogwarts," she said, hopefully meaning Dawlish rather than my godmother, "it wouldn't be safe for you to stay with most families. The Weasleys might be fine, but their boys are staying here as well."

"So I'm basically a prisoner  _ here _ ?" I said. It wasn't a whine. I certainly wasn't a 16-year-old reacting badly to being shut down by an authority figure.

"Take it as you will, Mr. Dresden," she shrugged. "There are certainly worse places to be a prisoner."

"And this summer?" I asked, wondering if I was just trapped here until I turned 17.

"Albus is looking into suitable situations for you. One of us will inform you when that's sorted."

Just like I didn't whine, I certainly didn't walk off in a huff at the injustice of it all.

I  _ did  _ have a fallback plan, and since McGonagall and Dumbledore weren't going to even pretend to think about my free will, I wasn't going to regret putting it into action. The rest of the term flew by as I made preparations, and the Sunday night before Christmas, I put them into action.

The first step was waiting to be sure Percy was asleep. I'd taken a long afternoon nap to be ready to stay up all night, so I was in no danger of nodding off while I waited for him to finally sink into a regular, shallow breathing that I could hear across the room. Quietly and slowly, I grabbed my stuff and slipped out of bed. While Percy was becoming less of a narc, just like with knowledge of my godmother's identity there was no way I was trusting him with my plan to sneak out of the castle.

Down in the third-year's dorm, Fred and George had already cleared the middle of the floor and set up a chalk circle surrounded in runes. Sharing the ritual for how to hide the Trace had been the last step to getting total cooperation from the twins. Fortunately, it was neither difficult nor dark. The only component of consequence was demiguise fur, for the invisibility aspect, and it needed hardly any. I'd been able to get enough for at least three castings of the ritual from fluff left over in empty packets of the stuff in the runes workshop.

"Percy went down quick," Fred grinned as I slipped into the room.

"Up bright and early to waste his whole holiday studying," George elaborated.

"And you think you can cover for me?" I asked.

"No problem, Harry," Fred nodded.

George explained with hand gestures, "We have a whole series of things like, 'I just saw him heading that way,' before we have to break out the special effects."

"Unless someone needs you for an emergency, you should be good at least until curfew tomorrow," Fred finished.

"Then let's make this happen," I said, stepping into the circle.

Fred joined me, I put some magic into the working and felt the circle snap closed around us as it filled with the power of the ritual. From the pocket of my transfigured muggle coat, I pulled out one of the small Harry "voodoo dolls" I'd pre-made and held it for a moment at the harmonic center of the magic. The doll was wrapped in twine, and I imagined I was unwrapping the Trace from me as I unwound it from the doll. As I finished, the ends were still attached to the doll, turning it into an amulet.

"I give the thread of my magic to you, for all that spy upon me," I said, handing the necklace to Fred.

"I will stand between you and the watchers," responded Fred, taking it and hanging it around his own neck.

Feeling the magic was fully charged, I used a toe to break the circle and sensed the power wash out. I felt slightly weaker, some of my magic left in the doll to stand in for me against the Trace. As far as the Ministry was concerned, the doll was now me, and Fred's spells would register as mine, while mine didn't register at all.

Unfortunately, the ritual was kind of vague about how long it would last. More time, more magic, and more distance would risk ending the effect early, which is why I'd made extra. But I hoped I wouldn't need to use them.

George quickly cast a cleaning charm to remove the circle, and the three of us slipped down into the common room. He'd pulled out a ratty old sheet of parchment I'd sometimes seen them with and was regarding it carefully. After a minute he said, "Looks safe. Clear between here and the passage if you go now. Good luck, Harry."

"Thanks guys," I said. I  _ didn't  _ say, "See you tomorrow," because I didn't want to be a liar.

I made it to the statue of the one-eyed witch the twins had showed me by the defense classroom, gave it a tap and the password, and was about to slide down the hole that opened when a quiet meow stopped me.

"I just have to run some errands, Missus," I told the cat. She cocked her head to the side, then head butted my leg so I would give her some scratches. "I'll see you later," I assured her, but I wasn't sure if she believed me. As I slipped into the claustrophobic secret passage and the statue closed up, I thought I heard her make a sad meow.

Getting outside the school wards was actually a pretty big undertaking in a small, dark tunnel, particularly when I didn't want to waste magic on a light charm. I'd walked this with the twins earlier to make sure it was clear, and I listened as I walked to make sure nothing else was in the tunnel with me. While I tripped a couple of times and hit my head on the low ceiling once, I otherwise reached the end safely.

I felt it when I crossed the Hogwarts wards into Hogsmeade, and I could have just apparated from there, but Bellatrix had made a good point about the rath. So I lurked underneath the trap door at the end of the tunnel for several minutes, listening to make sure the shop above was quiet. Then I carefully opened the passage and slipped into the chocolate shop and out the nearby back door. Fortunately, it was easy to open from the inside.

After dark in late December in north Scotland was obnoxiously cold, damp, and windy. Hopefully no one was watching the outside. In case they were, I tried to move like just someone trying to get across the town, even though my inclination was to creep. In this weather, someone being sneaky would stand out more than someone walking briskly as if trying to get out of the cold.

The moon was not far past full, so there was still enough light for me to find my way to the rath, particularly after spending so long in a pitch black tunnel. I heard a few things moving around in the underbrush of the woods, but even magical beasts would think twice about hunting on a night like this one, so I reached the mound without incident. I half expected Bellatrix to be waiting for me there, but she'd likely just been tagging along with Lucius rather than having any kind of sixth sense about my plans.

When I'd last apparated, I had splinched the hell out of myself, and I was still a little scared of it. But that was probably the worst situation to try it, I'd built my staff so it could help, and, if Bellatrix was to be believed, the rath would give me a huge boost to going long distances safely. Taking in a breath and hoping it wasn't my last, I deliberately determined my destination, turned in place, and disappeared.


	9. Stone Faced 9: Truancy Officer

##  Dead Letters

After an eternal moment of being squeezed through an infinitely thin straw, I returned to reality with the sound of my apparition pop echoing back to me in the moonlit twilight. I wasn't exactly sure where I was, other than outside at night, but I wasn't in agonizing pain so I'd probably done something right. A quick going-over seemed to indicate that I hadn't splinched myself this time, and all extremities were present and accounted for.

Immediate worries handled, I realized I was standing on a hill in the middle of a park, kids' swings and see-saws spread out across a play area at the base of the hill. This wasn't exactly where I meant to show up, and the weird way the moonlight hit the hill at a slightly different angle than the rest of the lawn nearby made me figure it was another rath. Downside, I didn't know where I was. Upside, I didn't feel exhausted after hopefully apparating all the way across Britain.

I could see city lights twinkling in all directions, and some on taller buildings in one direction that I hoped was London skyline. Not seeing anyone immediately nearby, I walked down the hill and out of the park into what turned out to be a residential street, row houses with no yards close to either side. It looked vaguely familiar, and was well-lit enough under streetlights, but I couldn't get my bearings.

I'd walked a few blocks in the cold before I hit a corner grocery that was open late, and my very first step was buying a whole case of Coke and some old fashioned non-wizarding snacks. While I was checking out, I asked the guy, "Is there a big post office around here?"

"Yeah, mate, about half a mile down that way," the cashier pointed exactly the direction I'd already walked most of that distance from. "Hang a right just past the train tracks past the park. But it's closed. Be closed this late even t'weren't Sunday."

"Thanks, just checking for tomorrow. Held packages."

"Good luck," he chucked. "Right mess it is, tryin' t' get your Christmas packages in this close to the day. Least the weather's not too bad."

"That's something, at least," I nodded. "Merry Christmas."

"Happy Christmas to you, too, mate. Nice walking stick, by the way."

"Thanks," I told him, hoping it didn't draw too much attention. The rest of my gear was concealable for the most part, but my skills at extension charms weren't quite up to hiding my staff. They did make me a nice little bag of holding, though. I snagged a can of Coke from the case and slid the rest and my snacks into my belt pouch as soon as I was out of sight. The bag was  _ essential _ for transporting the gear I was picking up, but it was damned useful for carrying ten pounds of cola without getting tired.

After months of having to get by on water, tea, and sometimes trying to stomach  _ pumpkin juice _ , a fresh can of cola was basically  _ bliss _ . If I'd had more muggle money, and more space in my bag, I'd have bought out the whole stock. I wondered if I could safely run duplication spells on soft drinks, or whether it was enough like food that Gamp's laws would stop me.

Enjoying my drink as I retraced my steps down the block, I passed where I'd appeared at the park, walked over a bridge with train tracks below, and shortly hung a right around the graveyard that had been my  _ planned _ destination. Fair enough. I wondered what would have happened if there hadn't been a rath so close by: would I have been relocated way out of the way?

It probably was for the best that I'd missed, since I noticed some kids hanging out in the graveyard, a boom box going and what sounded like loud pre-Christmas debauchery going on.

Having figured out where I was, it wasn't much more of a hike toward the big mail distribution center I'd found a few months back out exploring with Elaine. If the guy at the desk had been telling me the truth, this was the main post office hub for the whole west of London, including where we'd been staying. Big warehouses loomed out of the night, lit by streetlights to guide shipping trucks to the terminals. A few passed by as I walked, but I was hoping that being late evening on a Sunday would counter being during the Christmas rush. This would have been easier if I could have gotten here any other Sunday in the past few months.

I had pulled the hood of my transfigured jacket low just in case there were cameras and gave a quiet magical shove to get the turnstile gate to let me in even though it was after closing. There were basically no cars in the lot, which was promising, and I went around the building rather than trying the front door. It was actually reasonably warm in the city, especially compared to north Scotland, but a gust of wind as I walked around the long, unadorned building chilled me. Or maybe it was the feeling like I was being followed.

Anxious to get indoors, I tapped the handle of the side door with the oversized skeleton key I'd found in Filch's pile of contraband and whispered, " _ Alohomora _ ." The unlocking charm easily let me inside, and I found myself in a somewhat dingy hallway, the smell of oil, paper, and cigarettes heavy in the air. It was shockingly dark inside, compared to the well-lit parking lot outside. Not wanting to waste magic, I fumbled around and eventually found some switches that turned on lights in the hallway. Carts of half-sorted packages and letters were tucked against the wall, and windows looked out onto sorting floors.

Fortunately, like any good bureaucracy, signs were at every intersection giving a vague idea of what was in each direction, and it didn't take me too long to make it to the dead letter room. I hadn't left Justin's burning house as empty handed as I'd been in Azkaban. Knowing full well that aurors might show up for the blaze, I'd managed to save out a package, put my essentials into it, address it unintelligibly and with insufficient postage, and squeeze it into a postal pickup bin. Assuming the aurors had looked for anything I'd hidden between the house and where they caught me, they'd missed the completely muggle method of hiding it.

I knew they missed it, because if they'd found the skull not even Dumbledore would have been able to get me out of prison.

Looking out over the large room lit only with light from the door and some moonlight leaking in from skylights, I visualized the box, waved my staff, and chanted, " _ Accio _ package." I was thrilled when I felt the magic catch and heard a couple other boxes clatter to the floor as mine raced off a shelf to fly into my hands. All stamped up with the process of making its way here, I was glad that it hadn't gotten disposed of. If I'd had to wait until summer to get it, it probably would have been.

Popping open the package, I found it still contained what I expected: a few of Justin's rare books and scrolls I'd snagged for my godmother, a small bag of the keepsakes I had left from my parents, including my mother's amulet, and, wrapped in a few sweatshirts that still smelled faintly of burning house, a bleached-white human skull. I happily pulled the silver amulet over my head, shoved the books, keepsakes, and shirts in my pouch, and said, "Hey, Bob." When the skull in my hands twitched but otherwise did nothing, I said, a bit louder, "Wake up, lazybones."

Points of orange like candle flames appeared in the skull's eye sockets and it stretched its jawbone as if yawning, before saying, "Oh, hey, Harry. How long has it been?"

"Nearly five months, sorry," I told him. "They arrested me, then made me go to Hogwarts. First time I could get away."

He made a sniffing noise. Since he didn't exactly have a sense of smell, I figured that was his cue for using his magic senses on me. "Something weird is going on with your aura."

"My godmother gave me a ritual to put off the Trace temporarily. Had to use it to get down here. One of the jerk aurors is trying to prove I'm a killer," I explained.

"Hmm. It's about used up. Be careful." Bob's flames flickered, as if looking around. "Hmm, post office in the middle of the night, huh? Think you could summon me some reading material?" Bob wasn't really a skull, it was just a housing for a spirit of intellect. For some reason, of all the other things in the universe he could fixate on, his biggest obsession was profoundly weird. "Shouldn't be a big deal for your ritual. You've got juice in the tank for it."

Grumbling, but knowing this was the best way to make him useful for a while, I visualized the kind of thing I was looking for and said, " _ Accio _ porn."

Several magazines tastefully wrapped in nondescript brown paper flew out of the dead letter office. I shucked off the wrappers and showed him. "That's the stuff," chuckled the skull, regarding the gentleman's magazines. "So you're in school. We going back there?"

"Wasn't planning on it," I admitted. "Britain seems to have it out for me. Was planning on trying to catch a boat to sneak into France, then see if I can get the American embassy there to ship me back home."

"Shame to pass up the resources of a truly old-school school. Looks like you've been able to pick up new  _ accoutrements _ . I'd love to take a crack at their library. Supposed to be pretty intense," Bob wheedled, then admitted, "But you're the boss, boss."

"And don't you forget it," I grinned, glad to have Bob back. An encyclopedic reservoir of magical knowledge, Justin had gotten him somewhere and he'd been my teacher for most theory. More than that, he'd been my friend and the only one of the people in the house I'd ultimately been able to trust. "Going to be safe in an undetectable extension?"

"No worries," he said, so I slid him and his magazines into my bag, which was still just a football-sized leather pouch despite now having a case of soda, a human skull, and other miscellaneous odds-and-ends inside.

I turned off lights as I retreated through the post office, listened at the door to make sure it was still safe, and made sure the door locked behind me as I exited onto the parking lot. It was getting on toward midnight by this point, but my afternoon nap and the can of Coke were making me feel like I might make it to the English Channel before I felt like sleeping.

My brain fully engaged with planning how I'd make it fifty miles to the coast with minimal magic, I wasn't as cautious exiting the fence around the place as I'd been leaving the building proper. So I was surprised by a half dozen young men lurking in the bushes nearby, the boombox hoisted on one's shoulder but now turned off indicating that they'd been the kids having the party in the graveyard.

"Oy, guv," shouted a pasty but burly boy who was nearly as tall as me, "Let's have the keys to get into the lockup, yeah?"

##  The Unexpected Downsides of Crime

What I probably should have done was just apparate away. That time of night with that type of eyewitness, nobody would notice. But if Bob was right that I was very close to burning out my ritual to hide the Trace, apparating even a short distance would probably do me in. I needed to have enough juice left in the tank to get out of England, and that might mean magically confounding a passport control person at the very least.

So, like an idiot, I decided I'd try to deal with the problem without magic. And since I was being dumb, I tried out acting dumb, "What?"

"Seen you go in the building, didn't we?" insisted the large leader of the group of punks. They didn't look much older than me, kids without sufficient parental supervision. Much like myself, really. "Bet there's some lovely prezzies in there, to find. So hand over."

Even if I'd been the kind of person to just let a group of wannabe criminals go nuts stealing other peoples' Christmas presents, I honestly didn't want to waste the magic opening back up, and I didn't even have any fake keys to throw them to try to get away while they tried. Next tactic, lying, "I mean, I was just dropping off some sandwiches for my dad and the other night guard, so if you want to knock, they could let you in…"

By this point, the six of them had spread out around me, trying to cut off any means of escape. I had even the biggest one on stride length, but I wasn't exactly in good enough shape to be sure I could beat them at a half mile sprint back to civilization. I really needed to take up running one of these days. The leader scoffed, "Only night guard I ever seen in there is black, guv. Pull the other."

"Adopted?" I shrugged, sizing up the kids around me. At least compared to back home in America, I didn't have to worry much that anyone had a gun, but knives can be just as bad if the wielder is crazy and close. And at least half of them were small and rattish enough that I'd put my money on me in a fight, and that they'd break if I could take down the bigger ones. Unfortunately, that left the bigger ones.

"Only askin' one more time, guv," the leader growled, approaching within ten feet of me. I'd stepped out into the road so I wasn't backed against the fence, and they hadn't managed to totally surround me. But it was coming, and it was time to seize the initiative.

Magic and modern technology don't really mix. I don't know that anyone at Hogwarts understood muggle technology and science enough to give a totally plausible explanation, but the most likely I'd heard was that it did something to screw up how electricity worked. Most muggleborn eventually gave up on modern conveniences, because they'd be fine walking around but doing magic in the house would inevitably blow out their air conditioner or lights.

I, as has been noted, didn't have much in the way of magical finesse, and that meant I was particularly hard on electronics. I quietly hissed, " _ Ventus _ !" and subtly tilted my staff to cause a distracting chill breeze to roll across the group, with the center of my focus on the second-biggest guy, carrying the boom box. It suddenly wailed with unexpected feedback right into the guy's ear, then popped and started to smoke.

In the moment everyone was distracted by the wind and the haunted portable stereo, I leaped forward and swung. Wizards of the past didn't just carry staves because they had a lot of room for runes, though that was a big factor, but also because they were multiple pounds of solid wood with reach. The leader had gotten close to try to threaten me, but not quite close enough to punch me. That happened to be exactly close enough for me to hit  _ him _ .

My aim was good and I got him solidly in the side of the knee, following through with the under-handed strike to knock his leg out from under him. While the biggest guy was falling onto the pavement and the second-biggest guy was still focused on his fried stereo, I took a step and nailed the third-biggest guy in the stomach with the top of my staff.

And, congratulating myself on the three biggest threats down in three seconds, that was where things stopped going well for me.

It turned out I'd badly underestimated the stick-to-it-iveness of the smaller boys. While I'd fully committed both ends of my staff to striking, the boy furthest to my right had dashed in and kicked me in my own knee. I was moving so it was a glancing blow and didn't floor me nearly as well as the leader, but it hurt like hell. The kid on the far left had palmed a rock, and flung it at me from so close he could hardly miss. Again, I was lucky to be moving so it didn't nail me in my head, but it glanced off my left shoulder and drew a grunt of pain.

The leader had just hit the ground and was dazed, and the guy I'd gotten in the gut was staggering back trying to catch some air, but the boy with the boom box finally got it through his dumb-looking brain that violence was happening, and that his expensive toy was probably now so much trash. So he started swinging it at me.

At least I'd pegged one of the small ones right, since he was hanging back not doing anything until it looked more sure for his side. That left me backpedaling on a hurt knee trying to avoid an oversized rectangle of metal and plastic swinging like my own personal pit and the pendulum and trying to keep a guard up against the kids that had actually hit me. A couple swings with the staff forced back the one who'd kicked me, and I staggered in between him and the guy I'd gut punched to put them in between me and my stereo-wielding assailant.

Suddenly clear of the semi circle and pointed in the direction out, I tried just running, but my newly-injured knee immediately let me know that I wouldn't get far that way. It also apparently looked weak enough to the gang member who'd been hanging back, and he made his own rush in to show how tough he was and took a swing. I managed to bring my staff around in a guard, and he squealed when his knuckles hit oak, but the sudden twist put even more pressure on my knee and it shot little knives of pain up my leg.

I turned and realized the leader and the other kid I'd hit were about to recover and looked pissed, the boom box guy was slowly switching from swinging to charging, and the three little ones were getting ready to flank me again. My surprise was wearing off, and I was about to get the shit kicked out of me. No choice but to risk magic.

Waiting for my moment, I muttered, " _ Depulso! Flipendo! _ " The banishing charm shoved the boom box hard into its wielder's chest, causing a grunt and another small explosion as all the D batteries inside decided to catch fire. The knockback jinx threw the just-standing leader into the third biggest kid who'd gotten his wind back, both of them going down with a meaty thump. Finally, with a wide, " _ Ventus _ !" and a double-handed shove downwards with my staff, I called a blast of air straight out from me toward all the kids, blowing the ones still standing off their feet.

The fight appeared to be over and they'd probably play it off as a bunch of really bad luck rather than magic so I wasn't going to have rumors making it back to the aurors. But I also felt like that last spell ripped a blanket of wool off of me that I hadn't realized I'd been wearing, almost certainly signalling the end of my ritual and the return of the Trace. Damnit.

I hobble-ran away from the groaning toughs trying to figure out how I was going to get out of Britain without being able to use magic at all.

##  Phone a Friend

I'd managed to make it all the way back up the road and into town before my knee totally locked up, and planted myself at a 24-hour hole-in-the-wall Indian restaurant across from the bus depot. They probably weren't thrilled that I looked like I was going to stay all night nursing a coffee, but it wasn't like I was tying up table space other patrons were using. I  _ was _ hoping the thugs didn't wander this way, but theoretically the cops would be on my side this close to town.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I was pretty sure I had enough money for a bus ride down to the coast and a ferry across the channel, but they'd probably want to see my passport. I didn't have one. Justin had brought us here the wizard way and hadn't bothered getting us muggle identification. He'd put off a lot of things that would have made sense for living here for some time, which probably should have been my clue that he didn't exactly expect me to  _ live _ long.

While I wasn't exactly skilled with mind magic, I was pretty sure I could do enough to convince a security guy that a scrap of blank paper was a legitimate passport long enough to get through. But even without Dawlish being out to get me, even the regular Trace would probably throw up a ton of red flags if it caught you confounding muggles at the border. I could  _ try _ to get the US embassy in London to ship me home, but the Ministry might have enough ties with the muggle government that I was on a list. Getting deported home was likely to take long enough that information could make it through and I'd find myself getting picked up by aurors long before getting shipped home.

So I needed to run the anti-Trace ritual again. I had the tools to do it, but everyone magical I knew was either back at Hogwarts or I had no idea where they lived while they were home for winter break. Wait. That wasn't entirely true. Hermione had mentioned that her parents were both dentists, and the general area of metro London where they lived.

Borrowing the phone book from the restaurant, I flipped to the businesses section and it didn't take long to find a dentist advertising for doctors Jean and Helen Granger. Then it was another trip through the local listings with the full names to find a home phone number and address. And it was all on the way to the coast, so I wasn't wasting bus fare going the wrong way! Perfect.

The teller at the bus depot across the street was super helpful to an obvious American trying to figure out how to get thirty miles across town, and made me a detailed list of the buses and trains to take, so by dawn I was pulling into the south London suburb, slightly refreshed by a few power naps between switching transits and another couple cans of Coke.

Dentists' offices open very early, and a quick pay phone call in confirmed with the secretary that the Grangers' office  _ was _ open today, but that scheduling was tight if it wasn't an emergency. I was hoping the parents had gone to work and left Hermione at home for the Monday before Christmas Eve. She was a responsible girl. Surely even at 12 she was trusted to stay at home for the day? Talking her into helping me might be hard enough, I didn't exactly want to answer questions about why a 16-year-old boy was showing up asking their daughter to help him do magic.

After making my way to near the right neighborhood and having a cheap breakfast at a diner, I figured the time was right that the parents would be at work and hopefully Hermione was still at home. I called to make sure. "Hello," said a voice that sounded like the first-year.

"Hermione? It's Harry Dresden."

"Harry! Hi!" she exclaimed, and after a beat realizing what a phone call meant, "You're obviously not at school. What's up?"

"Yeeeaaahhh…" I admitted, drawling it out, "I'm actually kind of nearby and stuck. I was wondering if you could help me out."

"My parents are at work, but I could call them and ask if they can pick you up on break–"

I interrupted, "Actually, I just need your help doing a ritual… to cover up the Trace so I can use magic to get around."

"Oh, hmmm…" I could basically hear the gears turning in her brain. "Did you  _ sneak _ out of school, Harry?"

"Little bit," I said. "I had to pick up some personal stuff and they weren't willing to let me out for the holidays."

"But if you'd asked Professor McGonagall–"

"Who knows what she would have done? I know you chose to go to school here, but I'm basically stuck and they never seem to care what I want to do," I sighed. "I'm basically an adult, and used to doing stuff on my own, but they're only used to dealing with kids so they don't see it."

She was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, "Okay, I guess. But I want to know what this ritual is. You have the address?"

"Yeah, I can be over in about half an hour."

"See you then," she hung up, not totally sounding convinced that this was a good idea.

I could tell she'd just gotten more wrapped up in her own worries when she let me into her family's big suburban brownstone row house a little while later. The house was nice inside, with an obvious front sitting room full of classy furniture. But as she led me to the back part of the house, it all became a lot more comfortable. She led me into a cozy den that was basically all library, it had so many bookshelves, with her school books clearly set up where she'd been rereading them already over the break. "Something to drink?" she asked, remembering to be a good hostess.

"I'm good, thanks," I said, looking around at the room and pictures. Lots of pictures of her at various ages with her mother and father. "Huh, from Jean and Helen, I assumed you had two moms."

I'd been pronouncing what was evidently her dad's name like the pants, but when she corrected me, it sounded like a French starship captain's name. "He gets that a lot around here. Grandmother is French. It's my middle name, so I pronounce it the girl's way. It's confusing." After I'd been sitting for a second and just nodded, the 12-year-old-going-on-40-years-old asked me, "So what was so important that you sneaked out of school and came to London to get?"

I wasn't actually sure she was ready to know about Bob, though Bob was the main reason I  _ couldn't _ tell McGonagall about my cache, since he was probably  _ super _ illegal, especially for a student to have. I could tell her part of the story, "I managed to save the few mementos I had from my parents from the fire, and didn't want the Ministry to steal them or something, including this. It was my mother's." I showed her the silver amulet.

"That's pretty," she said, clearly mollified by keepsakes from my dead parents. "What does it mean?"

"The way it was explained to me, it represents the three aspects of magic: defense, knowledge, and power," I traced the outer triangle, the inner circle, and the bisecting line as I said it. "It's based on an old wizard legend about three treasures that three wizard brothers got from Death. A wand so good no one can kill you in a duel, a stone to contact the spirits in the afterlife, and a cloak that can make you so invisible not even the grim reaper can find you." She seemed surprised about how much wizard history she didn't know. "To me, it basically means that magic is about life."

Maybe it was the good explanation for why I'd left. Maybe it was because we'd slipped back into the role of mentor and student rather than peers. But finally, she said, "Okay. What's the ritual you need to do?"

"It just temporarily confuses the Trace about where I am and what I'm doing. In this case, as far as the Ministry is concerned, as long as you're not casting spells, I'm not casting spells. I already did it with the twins to get down here, but it wore off."

Another moment of conflict about breaking rules, but then the girl shone through that had covered for the boys after the troll, and she said, "Let's do it. But you have to explain it to me as we go."

The house had a walled back patio that would be a good place to write in chalk for easy cleanup but without the neighbors seeing, and we set up back there. It was a little slower going than it had been with the twins (who I'd just shown the entire ritual in advance), but she was clearly learning a lot as I explained each rune and how it worked. By late morning, we'd finally completed it and I felt my magic hidden in the second Harry doll amulet, which Hermione slipped into her sweater.

Having been fully invested in doing the ritual, I hadn't really been listening inside, so I was surprised that when we walked back in, a woman's voice said, "Bunch of cancellations, so I came home early to make lunch. Isn't it a little cold to be reading outside?" Before I could think about bolting, a woman who was clearly Hermione's mother walked into the back room and caught me dead to rights.

##  Mother May I

Dr. Helen Granger had enough in common with her daughter, bone-structure wise, that it was easy to see the family connection. But her coloration was dark-haired and olive-skinned, such that it seemed likely that she had a Greek ancestry. And I had worries that this would be a situation of a fury unleashed.

Before her mother could, I assumed, start yelling about the much older boy in the house with her pre-teen daughter without parental invitation, Hermione tried, "Harry was in the neighborhood showing me a ritual so I can do magic at home over the breaks."

Somehow, my name triggered recognition in the older woman, and she, after taking in my height, staff, and that everyone was fully dressed, said, "Helen Granger. Pleased to meet you, Harry. We've heard a lot about you." She put out a hand.

Trying not to look too guilty, I shook her hand and said, "Good to meet you. Sorry for coming by unannounced. I had an unexpected magical problem and Hermione was the only one I knew of nearby."

"Something to do with doing magic over the breaks?" asked Dr. Granger, clearly indicating that her daughter came by her intelligence honestly.

Fortunately, my brain informed me that I wasn't going to get away with much of a lie around this woman, and I figured I might as well tell her pretty much what I told her daughter. "I'd stored some family keepsakes that I didn't really trust anyone at school to get, and was running out of time to pick them up. So I kind of had to sneak out of school to come grab them before it was too late." Realizing that I hadn't fully answered her question, I amended, "And the magic that keeps people from noticing me casting spells outside of Hogwarts ran out, so I needed Hermione to help me reset it."

"And she'll be able to use that to practice magic at home?" she quizzed.

"If she can find another witch or wizard to help her, yeah," I considered. "It's slightly advanced magic, but she's basically figured it out already just from watching me do it once."

"Excellent," she grinned. I must have shown surprise about rule-breaking, when she explained, "We've been worried about Hermione being able to keep up with her studies over the summers since McGonagall told us about the Trace and then admitted the established families had ways to get around it. I don't want Hermione falling behind the 'pureblood' children, especially after all the names they've been calling her."

"There's not much chance of that, ma'am," I told her. "Hermione's already way ahead of all the kids in her year, including ones that have known about magic their whole lives."

The girl glowed at the unexpected praise, as did her mother. Helen asked, "Do you need to rush on, or can you stay for lunch?"

Completely nonplussed by not getting the chewing out I was expecting, I shrugged and said, "Close enough now that I can make time. Thanks."

Helen Granger quizzed me and Hermione about Hogwarts as she put together sandwiches for lunch. It turned out that Hermione had been explaining a  _ lot _ to her parents in letters home. But her mother seemed pleased to have someone else independently verifying what she'd heard. I'd let my guard down by the time she asked, "And you're in some kind of trouble with the Ministry?"

I shot Hermione a look, and she had the decency to blush. But I didn't want them to think of me as a magical criminal or anything, so I gave the vague explanation, "My foster father, who was my mentor, turned out to secretly be a really bad guy. The dark ritual he was trying to do to me went wrong, and I got out but he didn't. Turned out he had some friends on the force that refuse to believe he was bad. I didn't get the impression I'd get a fair trial, before Dumbledore got me into Hogwarts to get me away from those aurors."

She gave me a look as if reading my mind more thoroughly than Dumbledore could, then nodded. "That's really unfortunate. Between what McGonagall explained, Hermione's letters, and reading some of her history books, I'm not too pleased with the picture that forms of magical government. It seems Victorian, at best."

I shrugged, going back to helping set the table, and explained, "Having the first witch in your family going to Hogwarts is probably the worst way to learn about all of it. As far as I know, the vast majority of magical people basically treat the Ministry the way hobbyists treat the main authority for their hobby. They read the magazines, and sometimes show up for certification, but they still have a day job. Hogwarts is the school for  _ serious enthusiasts _ , though." I paused to think of an analogy. "It's like Hermione got sent to a super serious Russian ballet school when nobody else in your family even knew ballet was a thing until she found out she was good at it."

"And small industry politics is even more dysfunctional than national politics," she nodded, getting it. "You should see some of the ridiculousness that happens at dentistry conferences."

At about that point, I heard the front door open, and a man's voice shout, "I'm home!" Dr. Jean Granger came into view, and I found out where Hermione got her coloration. He was pale with her same brown hair, and, as short as he kept it, it basically turned into a white-dude 'fro. He didn't seem surprised to see me, so someone must have called ahead when I wasn't paying attention. "Mr. Dresden, good to meet you."

"Dr. Granger, likewise," I said, taking the man's hand. Again, I was expecting fatherly disapproval or at least a dominance handshake, but it was just as firm as if he was meeting a client in his dental practice.

"Jean, please, or it gets confusing around here," he grinned.

"Then Harry for me," I allowed.

"Fair enough," he smiled, then saw that everything was set up, "Just in time, huh? Glad I didn't hold up the lunch."

Sitting down over the sandwiches, Jean touched on a lot of the same questions Helen had, clearly just as pleased to have additional context for what his daughter had been up to for the past few months. He was also, it turned out, just as good at hitting me with the hard questions after I let me guard down.

"So you and Hermione fought a troll?"

"Stars and stones, Hermione," I nearly choked on my sandwich. "You tell your parents  _ everything _ ?"

"Why wouldn't I?" she responded, honestly confused.

"I figured something like that, they'd have you out of Hogwarts like a shot," I admitted.

Helen explained, "We're not thrilled about it, of course. But this kind of danger isn't going to go away, and if we pull her out of school they'll seal her magic and remove our memories of it. So we'll be in just as much danger and won't be able to do anything about it." She took a sip of her water, then further explained, "And even if we wanted to continue her magical education elsewhere, who knows if it's safer? You just told me  _ your _ previous place of education saw you barely escape from a deadly ritual."

"And they do seem to have a pretty advanced medical system, so I'm not sure what we consider dangerous really  _ is _ ," added Jean. I couldn't argue with any of that, and I wasn't sure if I should share my suspicions that the troll was deliberately sent after Hermione. After a moment of thoughtful sandwich eating, he added, "I  _ am  _ a little worried about the giant three-headed dog in the building."

Seeing Hermione nodding, I mentioned, "Fluffy's actually not a problem." They all looked at me like I was crazy, so I explained what the house had figured out in the last few weeks of exploration, "There was no chance that most of Gryffindor wasn't going to go check it out after Hermione and her friends got in to see him by accident. And they kept daring each other to get closer, until they figured it out. He seems to be well trained or under some kind of spell to keep him from actually hurting any students. Snarls and snaps a bit, and lies down on the trap door if anyone gets too close, but several of our housemates have even started petting him and bringing him treats."

Hermione was suddenly pissed off, "The twins told all the first years that he was vicious and nearly bit George's ear off! Oooh, I'm going to get them!" Apparently her parents were also fully informed about the twins, and everyone chuckled realizing that Hermione had been pranked. "I wonder if it's actually worth my time to figure out who Nicholas Flamel is."

I wasn't actually very good with British magical history, but I did know enough about major magical innovators, so I just said, "The French alchemist?"

Hermione suddenly got a "eureka!" look and asked, "May I be excused? I need to go look something up!" She raced off to the den as soon as her mother nodded.

With the girl out of the room, her parents glanced at each other as if to confirm that it was a good time, and then Helen said, "Harry, we want to thank you for how much you've done for Hermione."

I waved her off, "She actually wound up having to save  _ me  _ from the troll, if she's being modest about it. She's a really smart kid. I'm glad to hear you're not worried about her continuing to learn magic. I think she's going to be great at it."

They once again beamed at the praise of their daughter, but Helen went on, "It's not just that. For the first few weeks of school, she seemed to be having a hard time. The only thing she seemed really excited about most weeks was a little study group some older boy was running that she'd invited herself to. You know her well enough now that you can probably imagine she's always had a hard time making friends." I nodded at that, so she continued, "The last couple of months have been totally different."

Jean picked up the story, "Did you know that she didn't even explain the troll until later in her letter, after Halloween? She started off explaining how she was having a really bad day, and then you came to check on her, talked her out of her funk, and helped her figure out how to make friends. And I honestly can't think of any other 16-year-old boys that would go far out of their way for someone they didn't know  _ unless _ –"

"She's  _ twelve _ !" I said, reflexively, surprised at the intimation. "And, to be honest with you, the girl I  _ thought  _ was the love of my life tried to help my mentor do whatever horrible thing he was going to do to me, and probably died with him. That was five months ago. I'm not ready to date anyone, even someone my  _ own _ age."

"I didn't think so," he smiled. "Seeing you with her, you're like a big brother–"

"Or the cool, young teacher that  _ gets it _ ," added Helen with a grin.

"Right. So, like Helen said, thanks for looking out for our daughter. You didn't have to, and nobody else was. It means the world to her. And us."

"A philosopher's stone!" shouted Hermione, racing back into the dining room holding aloft an open history textbook. "I wasn't looking in the right places! It's so obvious! It wasn't safe in Gringotts, so they're protecting it in Hogwarts!"

"Makes sense," I nodded to the excited pre-teen, who beamed at me agreeing with her. Her parents looked confused, so I added, "You know? Alchemists always trying to turn lead into gold and live forever? Flamel actually figured out how to do it." That got a couple of assenting shrugs, as that probably wasn't even in the top ten weirdest things about magic they'd heard lately.

"That may have taken us  _ months  _ to figure out without you. Thanks Harry!" Hermione gushed.

"You're welcome. But you would have gotten it faster than that," I demurred. She probably would have figured it out  _ instantly  _ if she'd asked a teacher, but I wasn't going to probe in front of her parents why she suddenly didn't trust the staff. It was probably because she realized it was supposed to be a secret and they'd be mad she was looking into it. Not that half the school wasn't desperately curious. But thinking about teachers did remind me I needed to get going. "Well, thanks for lunch and everything," I said, starting to stand.

"It was our pleasure," Helen insisted, as they stood and started walking me to the front door. "You're welcome to come by anytime you're in the neighborhood. But… maybe let us know you're coming next time," she chided with a smile to take the sting out of the rebuke.

I said my goodbyes and left, walking down the street back toward the train station. I wasn't far from the coast, so hopefully I could get there and be out of British territory by sunset. With any luck, within a week I could be back in the States, out of the reach of everyone that was trying to manipulate or imprison me, back in charge of my own destiny…

…struggling to learn what else I could about magic, never having solved any of the mysteries about what was going on here, and leaving kids like Hermione in the lurch when I'd apparently accidentally improved their lives.

I'd only walked a few blocks by the time I'd started having serious doubts about my plan. Was I just running away? Was being a broke orphan with no degree back home really going to make me happy? Had I accidentally made friends even though I hadn't meant to, and could I have a real support network in the kids at school? Was putting up with Hogwarts for at least another ten months until I was considered an adult really going to break me?

Long before I got to the train station, I'd changed my mind. I hoped I wasn't going to regret it, but I spent my traveling money on a few more quality-of-life improvements at the first store I came to, then apparated back to Hogwarts.


	10. Stone Faced 10: Winter Breaks

##  Christmas

"How are you so good at this?" I sighed, having been annihilated again at chess by the smallest Weasley. After he'd exhausted his brothers' patience at losing the game, he'd finally talked me into playing a few games with him late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve.

One of the biggest shocks I'd gotten attending Hogwarts was to learn how many pureblood kids took to the primordial control of reality provided by learning magic with exactly the same enthusiasm as muggle students had for algebra or social studies. Ron Weasley was exactly the kind of underachieving jock that would put in precisely the minimum effort to not get kicked from athletic activities. It was maddening, but made a certain kind of sense if you let children grow up so steeped in magic that they were somehow bored by it.

What didn't track was the chess. Jocks might also be good at Nintendo, where their twitch reflexes could shine, and might enjoy board and card games. But getting good at chess was difficult. I wasn't that great at it, honestly, but Ron usually beat everyone I'd seen him play, including kids that  _ were  _ good. And that would seemingly mean intelligence, patience, and forethought.

He just shrugged at my question, so I impatiently dove deeper, "I mean, are you actively planning a bunch of moves ahead, or is this just intuitive? Do you memorize old games for gambits?"

"What's intuitive mean?"

"Going with your gut," I explained.

"Oh, no, not usually," he admitted. "We have some old books at home that explain a bunch of gambits. But those mostly only work against people who are also playing gambits. I guess I think three or four moves ahead early on, and can go further when the board's getting clear and there's not much left you can do."

"You know  _ why  _ wizard's chess is popular, right?" I tried.

He nodded, and then explained, "It's for, like, battles. Makes you better at strategies for dueling. And quidditch."

I shook my head, remembering that my answer to Justin had been similar, when I was his age. "Three dark wizards kick in the door to the common room, right now. What do you do?"

"Well, if they're coming in from the front, I could–"

I interrupted, "Your brothers are screaming from upstairs, it seems there's one or more of them up there fighting."

"Then I guess I'd try to–"

I kept piling on the problems. "I'm knocked across the room by a spell and pinned down by two of them, but the third one is pointing his wand at you. There are footsteps racing down the stairs and you're not sure if it's a bad guy or your brother."

Frustrated, Ron yelled, "You have to let me finish a sentence!"

"Why?" I asked, probably a little smugly. "An actual fight goes even faster than I was describing it. So does a quidditch game. And there's all kinds of things going on that you can't predict. You don't even know all the things your opponent can do."

He crossed his arms and frowned petulantly, "But it really is for battles!"

I wobbled my hand in a "kind of" gesture, and explained, "Maybe for muggles. A long time ago, when you could stand on a hill and look out and see your groups of guys and their groups of guys, and you knew they basically had to move next to your guys and stab them with a spear, you could kind of abstract it into chess. Even then, generals would get a lot of people killed if they expected they knew all the moves the other side could make. And wizards  _ never  _ fought like that."

"What's it for, then?" he let me lead him, but clearly didn't understand why I was being mean to him.

"Say you're making a boil cure potion. You're about to add your porcupine quills but it's looking too green. Can you stir the potion to get it to change to the right color, or should you just put in the quills? If you put in the quills and it starts going purple instead of blue, can you change the number of times you stir it to fix the color now?"

"I… just follow the instructions, and hope it turns out alright," he admitted.

"Why? Potions have rules, just like chess. At each stage, there are ways that it can go wrong because of minor mistakes, poor ingredients, or problems with your heat. And if you learn the counter-moves and think ahead to what you want it to do, you can still have it turn out right." He seemed to maybe be getting it, so I added another example, "You won't be able to take arithmancy for a couple more years, but it can be similar. When you're inventing a new spell, or just doing a complicated ritual, things outside your control can mean it doesn't do what you expected. If you can plan ahead and know the rules, you can still save it. That's why wizards play chess."

"But, I  _ understand  _ chess," he complained. "Professor Belby said some stuff like that for potions, too, but it seems like you have to know  _ so much _ . And it's different for each potion."

"Only because the Hogwarts curriculum was invented by maniacs," I grumbled. "They have you jumping from snake fangs to mistletoe to flobberworms. If they'd just stay on potions with similar ingredients, you'd see that the rules are pretty consistent."

"Potions is boring, anyway," Ron shrugged.

"A bunch of people think  _ chess  _ is boring," I told him. "Just seems weird to me that you've put in so much effort on that, and don't want to get the good grades that seem like they'd be so easy for you to get by just taking the next step."

"Huh, maybe," he considered. "Want to go again?"

"Only if you agree to work with Hermione on some extra credit potions after the break," I pressed. "Otherwise, you're just wasting your time learning chess." I'd seen a little of how much it had affected Percy to have mostly underachievers in his year, and I figured Hermione would have a better time if she actually had friends that wouldn't try to constantly kneecap her learning.

He sullenly agreed, and I played a few more games with him before having a quick dinner and turning in early, still not totally recovered from my escapades and limited sleep the previous day. It was a small price to pay to maybe help out Hermione in the long run.

I woke to a rustling sound from Percy's bed. "Happy Christmas, Harry," he said, as I woke and noticed the pile of packages at the foot of my own bed.

"You, too, Percy," I said, groggily. "I didn't think I'd gotten any presents."

He explained, "The house elves must have been intercepting the presents for those of us staying in the castle. Dumbledore does like his surprises." He already had a notepad out, cataloging his pile of presents, likely to send proper thank you notes later.

I looked through the tags on my own, and was pleased to see that the people I'd thought to get gifts for had also gotten gifts for me, so nobody would be embarrassed. Percy, Penny, and I had all swapped books, finding various reference tomes on creatures and defense spells. I'd also gotten Oliver a book that looked like a reasonably accurate set of stories of the fae. He'd gotten me candy. Hopefully nobody would be too put out that the books I'd given were duplicated from the Hogwarts library, rather than purchased new. I'd at least replaced the covers with handmade ones and put in the enchanting work to make them permanent conjurations.

I'd spent some effort on Hermione's gift, and was especially happy about it after all the help she and her family had given me over the weekend. I'd used various protective and durability charms on a quill so it would last through use, and subtly worked runes into the shaft so it served as a focus for the levitation charm. It wouldn't work as well as my staff, but she'd hopefully find it interesting. She'd remembered me complaining about my wardrobe and must have told her parents, because her gift to me was a stack of muggle t-shirts.

Hopefully Hagrid liked the present I'd made him, though I might have to teach him how to use it. I'd put the focus light bulb into a lantern housing I'd turned into a shield focus. If he could use it, it would make for a better source of light and protection for his night trips into the forest. For Filch, I'd found a charm that was supposed to enhance the familiar bond, and worked it into a collar and wristband for Mrs. Norris and him.

In return, their packages were the biggest of the lot. Hagrid had provided me a pile of mostly-tanned hides from various beasts, and Filch had clearly gone back to the contraband pit and found more items that would likely provide useful enchanting materials. I'd passed on the last of my stock to the twins in their gifts, and they'd gotten me several vials of interesting ingredients (none of us would point out that they were probably lifted from the school's potions cabinet).

Speaking of the twins, I didn't have a chance to open my final presents before we heard them shouting from down the stairs. Percy and I shared a look, then headed down to find them gathered in the first years' room. "Why all the noise?" Percy asked his brothers.

Percy still had the sweater he'd just finished unwrapping slung over his arm, and rather than answer what they'd been up to, or explain Ron's guilty look, Fred grabbed the sweater and displayed that it matched the hand-knitted ones they were all wearing. Percy's had a letter P knitted into the chest, and Fred and George were, theoretically, currently distinguishable by the letters on their own. "P for prefect! Get it on, Percy, come on, we're all wearing ours."

While the twins struggled to force Percy into his own sweater, I noticed Ron trying to casually hide something in a fabric bundle under his own, maroon-colored sweater. He finally saw me watching, and blanched, glancing toward Percy who currently had his head buried in wool and twins. I grinned and nodded, tacitly agreeing to not rat out whatever contraband he'd received to his prefect brother.

The Weasleys all went down to the common room to have a family morning, which gave me the chance to look at my last three presents, each of them unexpected. The first, I initially thought was a sweater like the Weasleys had gotten, but the floppy package actually revealed a large scarf in some kind of tartan pattern. It wasn't labeled with the sender, but I couldn't detect any enchantments on it so I shrugged and resolved to figure it out later.

A small package included a note:

_ Fawkes only rarely provides components for enchanters, but we both thought you would find something worthwhile to create with this. _

_ Albus Dumbledore _

Within the thin box was a large, red tail feather, presumably from Dumbledore's phoenix. It practically hummed with potential magic, and I immediately started thinking of all the items it would be useful for.

Setting aside the feather, I looked at the last package, clearly a large but thin book, also without a tag. Within was a road atlas for Britain. Confused by the gift, I flipped through and noticed that periodically circles of gold paint had been added to the maps. It took me a while to work it out, but when I found one in the park I'd apparated to the other night, I realized that these must be the locations of raths. There was one near enough to Hermione's house that I would have saved myself some effort if I'd known about it, getting back to Hogwarts.

I probably owed my godmother a present in return, now. Rule number one of the fae is never owe them anything. Even if she wasn't  _ actually _ a faerie, I didn't feel good about being at a gift imbalance with her. I'd managed to save more of the books from Justin's library than she'd hoped for, so hopefully that would balance the scales, whenever I could actually get them to her.

Christmas lunch was ridiculously extravagant, particularly for fewer than a couple dozen students scattered across the house tables and half the staff. I expected that we'd be seeing most of the hundred roast turkeys as leftovers for at least the rest of the break. I noticed that the twins were being  _ unusually _ affectionate to their little brother, almost like they were buttering him up.

When we trooped back to the dorms, the boys insisting that they wanted to go play in the snow, I let Percy head up to our room then shouldered the other three into Ron's room and closed the door. "Okay, spill," I told them.

"Might as well show him," Fred told Ron.

"Yeah, if Harry was prefect we'd never get away with anything," George said.

"Fortunately, he knows the benefits of mischief," Fred finished.

Ron nodded and pulled out what I'd assumed was a fabric bag, but he shook it out into a large cloak. Grinning, he swirled it around his shoulders and, as it settled, everything but his head disappeared. I now knew why Ron was the new favorite brother; the things the twins would get up to with this. "Who got you that?" I asked.

They all shrugged and Ron showed me a note:

_ An old friend left this in my possession before he died. Unfortunately, he has no heirs, and I think that you may prove to be a worthy keeper. Use it well. _

_ A Very Happy Christmas to you _

"Harry recognizes the handwriting," whispered Fred.

It was basically identical to the writing from my own note, so of course I did. Not sure whether I should tell them that they'd basically been given permission to sneak around the school, I figured they'd get it out of me eventually, so I exclaimed, "Hell's bells. Why would  _ Dumbledore  _ give you an  _ invisibility cloak _ ?"

##  The Mirror

A few days later we were all hanging around the common room in the afternoon when Ron absently mentioned, "I found a mirror that shows the future."

"Oh?" asked Percy, who was sitting across from me by the fire, while we were both reading. The other Weasleys were put out that we'd been regularly snagging the most comfortable armchairs in the room over the holidays, by right of seniority.

Ron had been playing exploding snap with the twins, and probably forgot Percy was in the room, but admitted, "Yeah. In an empty classroom near the library." What he probably wasn't mentioning was that he'd found it sneaking around invisible after curfew. At this point, even Percy had to realize that his three little brothers had barely spent any time in their beds since Christmas morning.

"Well, let's see it," Fred insisted, bored with the magical card game but not bored enough to switch to chess. The magical world really had a very limited number of ways to waste time on a cold December day.

Even Percy seemed to be bored and so we all trooped after Ron down to the fourth floor, where he oriented himself by a particularly tall suit of armor and then led the way through a door into one of the abundant empty classrooms around the school. As he'd explained, a large, ornate mirror dominated a room where all the desks and chairs had been pushed to the walls and covered with cloth tarps.

"You have to stand in front of it like this," Ron said, taking a position immediately before the mirror. "Can you see? I'm head boy and quidditch captain!"

I read the inscription along the top of the mirror, then, quickly figuring out the nonsense was meant to be mirror-writing, read it backwards and laughed at Ron's pronouncement. "Quidditch captain I can see," I admitted, "but you're going to have to put in  _ way  _ more effort if you want to be head boy."

Percy didn't seem to have immediately jumped to reading it backward like I did, but explained, "I think this is the Mirror of Erised. I read about it. It reflects your… desire, I think?"

"I show not your face, but your heart's desire," I said, tracing the inscription backward with my finger so the other boys would get it.

The twins guffawed as Ron's face fell. "So it  _ doesn't  _ tell the future?"

Percy shrugged, "Like Harry said, if you want to be head boy, you need to put in a lot more effort. But mother will be pleased to learn that your heart's desire is academic excellence."

"Our turn!" sang the twins, in unison, picking up Ron and moving him aside so they could alternate looking into the mirror and whispering to each other what they saw.

"What do you see?" asked Ron.

"Oh, we're also definitely head boy," Fred lied, without even trying to sound honest.

"Both of us. How could they pick between such paragons of excellence?" elaborated George.

"Percy's turn!" Fred insisted, and they shoved him in front of the mirror.

"Youngest Minister ever, right?" George asked.

"Actually, no," Percy admitted. To the shocked looks of his brothers, he explained, "It shows me at the headmaster's desk, nearly as old as Dumbledore, with all kinds of awards for discoveries around me."

The brothers actually nodded at that, and Ron said, "You'd make a good headmaster, Perce."

Seemingly shocked that the twins weren't making fun of him, Percy just stepped aside and said, "Harry?"

Not as thrilled about the idea as the others, I couldn't really excuse myself. Standing in front of the mirror, it wasn't long before figures started to materialize within. To either side of me, my father, as I remembered him from childhood, and my mother as I imagined her from the photos I'd seen of her. Behind us, Justin and Dawlish appeared, and my mother spun around and blasted them away with a series of curses and hexes. My father briefly walked off frame, only to return with Elaine as she'd looked before the betrayal, tears in her eyes as she mouthed what looked like sincere apologies for what she'd done to me.

Wiping away a tear and vowing never to look into this heartbreaking artifact again, I coughed out, "Oh, hey, I'm head boy, too."

##  Distress Call

" _ Flipendo! _ " shouted the small redhead, flinging a surprisingly decent knockback jinx at Hagrid.

" _ Protego! _ " yelled the oversized gamekeeper, interposing the lantern I'd made for him between himself and Ron and managing to erect a shield that stopped the young Weasley's attack. Not that it would have  _ actually  _ done much to Hagrid had it hit.

"Excellent job, Ronald," congratulated Percy, who'd been drilling his little brother on the spell.

"You too, Hagrid," I told the big man, who'd really appreciated the gift but had been a little dubious about the value of a shield spell given his natural resistance to magic. After Percy and I had managed a pair of powerful enough stunners to bring him down as a demonstration, he'd admitted that it wouldn't hurt for him to learn other ways to defend himself.

"Us next!" shouted Fred, as the twins had been bored and cold out by Hagrid's hut while watching their brother and the half-giant figure out the spells.

"Fine. Fred, practice shield spells against Ronald. George, see if you can get jinxes past Hagrid's shield," commanded Percy, who'd taken quite happily to organizing the impromptu tutoring.

Surprising everyone, Ron had taken our warnings to heart about how if he actually wanted to be head boy, he'd never make it at the rate he was going. He'd come to us two days after viewing the mirror and asked for help with his classes. At my suggestion, rather than load him down with more book work, we'd been drilling him on some of the practical and fun stuff he should have been learning so far.

Personally, I expected his enthusiasm to wane again when he had to go back to studying magical theory instead of casting jinxes, but I was the wrong person to be throwing stones about that. After her abortive attempt at detention, McGonagall had been growing increasingly frustrated at trying to get me to put in more than a minimal effort on homework for my classes.

The addition of the twins to the practice session immediately made it more chaotic. Fred was sending nonverbal tickling charms at Ron every time he had a moment to drop his shield between knockbacks. George was trying the entire range of the first through third year syllabus of jinxes at Hagrid, trying to get something through. He actually managed a freezing charm that was probably ahead of the curve for his year, and coated Hagrid's legs in ice. The big man easily moved his legs to crack out of the impediment, but nodded at the hit.

This continued for a while, but we'd started after lunch, and it was already entering twilight before we'd started to get tired of dueling. Hogwarts was so far north, the sun set not long past the middle of the afternoon. Percy was clearly about ready to tell everyone to pack it in when, from the shadows of the forest near Hagrid's hut, we heard a woman's voice scream, "Help! Help me!" Something or someone crashed through the underbrush, and the cry for help continued, receding into the forest.

Buoyed by their irrepressible Gryffindor spirit and the recent successes dueling, the twins were off into the woods before Percy could yell at them to stop, and Hagrid yelled, "C'mon, Fang!" before charging off after them, at least remembering to grab his crossbow on the way in.

"Ronald, no!" shouted Percy, as the youngest Weasley boy started to head after the others. "Go back to the castle and get more help!" Dejectedly, Ron nodded and turned to start running back across the grounds.

It had taken me a crucial few moments to gather my foci, or I probably would have been right into the forest with the others. But while I grabbed my staff and walked slowly toward the trees, stowing my blasting rod, I was listening, trying to trace the sounds of the receding damsel, and I heard a second source of crashing underbrush to my left along the treeline, in the opposite direction from where they were running into the forest.

Having seen to Ron and stayed with me walking slowly toward the forest, Percy caught where I was looking at the second noise and we both watched a large silhouette emerge from the trees. "I never heard that there were moose in the Forbidden Forest," he said, confused. "Whatever happened must have scared it?"

"That's no moose," I growled, sadly realizing my  _ Star Wars _ reference was totally lost on Percy. While the silhouette definitely appeared to be shaped like some form of deer-like quadruped, it didn't move like one. Instead, its hooved legs bent oddly, and it loped with a predator's hunting stance. I glanced along its path and it seemed to be heading directly for the now-undefended 12-year-old. "It's after Ron!"

"Watch out, Ronald!" yelled Percy as we both took off running at the beast. The little redhead was fast on his feet, and already far enough ahead of us that it was unclear if we were close enough to help immediately.

"Ronald! Keep running!" came an uncannily good impression of Percy. The beast's mouth had flapped, impossibly large, as it mimicked the prefect, and it hadn't slowed in the least.

Ron, who didn't realize he was fleeing from a monster, turned to get clarification only to see the beast bearing down on him. "Blimey!" he half-shouted, but didn't seem to be sure he was in danger from what might look like a charging herbivore. But as he tried to move out of the side hoping it would run past, and it turned back toward him, the boy did have the good sense to whip out his wand and yell, " _ Flipendo! _ "

While it was a surprisingly good and accurate knockback jinx, and I was pleased he'd done it reflexively after only an afternoon's training, it washed over the creature with no noticeable effect. "It's magic resistant!" I huffed, more in case Percy hadn't seen than for Ron's benefit. The boy was about to be trampled or worse and I was still too far to be sure of getting him with a seize and pull charm, so I yelled out my standby, " _ Ventus! _ " while swinging my staff as I charged forward.

A blast of sideways wind caught Ron and sent him more or less back toward us just as the beast swung its antlers through where he'd been standing. Percy was thankfully quick with a screamed, " _ Molliare! _ " to set a cushioning charm on the ground where Ron was flying. The small Weasley, tumbling like he was stuck in a clothes dryer, hit the ground with a couple of bounces instead of a thud. He looked like he was trying not to vomit, but was otherwise unhurt.

The beast skidded its hooves into the grass to make a hard turn, reorienting back towards its prey. Finally seeing it head-on and getting closer in our charge, I could tell that its antlers were two different sizes, and crazily shaped, looking like they were edged in vicious serrations. In the failing sunlight, mad eyes twinkled at us as it flipped its mouth back open and yelled in Percy's voice, "Hold still, Ronald! Hold still!" Its mouth was more like a  _ beak _ , sharp-looking bone ridges inside instead of teeth.

Finally feeling like I was close enough, I yelled, " _ Carpe retractum! _ " and yanked back on my staff. Ron, thankfully, flew back toward us on a thin beam of light, and Percy was ready with another cushioning charm as he bounced to a stop at our feet. We both stopped, flanking Ron and dropping into a guard stance.

Ron started to ask, "What is– erp!" and then  _ did  _ vomit behind us after the two unexpected flights through the air.

" _ Impedimentia! Immobulus! Locomotor wibbly! Arresto momentum! _ " cast Percy in an impressively fast series of attempts to slow or stop the creature that was now charging directly at us, his wand a blur in the air in front of him. All four simply seemed to wash over the creature just like the troll on my birthday.

Rather than waste time asking why he didn't believe me that it was magic resistant, I held my staff in my left hand and drew my blasting rod. " _ Bombarda! _ " I yelled, pointing at the ground ahead of the charging monster. My exploding charm hit the lawn like a crashing meteor, kicking up a person-sized crater and flinging a hail of sod into its face.

Apparently expecting another spell that would just wash over it, the beast hadn't slowed down, and stumbled, blinded, into the impromptu pit, its antlers planting into the dirt on the far side and nearly flipping before flopping back into the hole, dirt settling around it. Unfortunately, it seemed to only be down for a moment while getting its bearings, only about twenty feet away. From this distance, I could make out the strange mottled black color of its fur and how its face didn't really look like any kind of natural animal. It  _ was  _ as big as a moose, though, and that was not ideal for our current proximity.

"Hit it with its club!" suggested Ron as he wiped off his mouth and tried to shake off his dizziness and stand back up.

Percy was clearly about to explain that it didn't have a club, but I'd been thinking along the same lines and had a hunch, so I cut him off with, "Can you transfigure some iron spikes?"

"Out of what?" the prefect asked, reasonably, but did a quick, " _ Accio rocks! _ " and started trying to make what I'd asked for.

Meanwhile, my lack of wand making me much slower at transfiguration than Percy, I had switched back to my staff and was trying to help with a hissed, " _ Oppugno! _ " as I tried to get any rocks closer to the beast to fly into it. It worked but didn't do much other than slow it a bit more as it staggered to its feet and gave us a baleful look from its mad eyes.

It had regained all four feet and hunched down for another charge when Percy said, "Ready!" and held out a handful of dark gray, pencil-shaped lengths of transfigured metal.

Hoping it was enough, I told him to, "Throw them up!" and then yelled, " _ Depulso! _ " as I baseball swung my staff at the improvised missiles. Backed up by my banishing charm, the spikes flew like a shotgun blast into the monster's face.

The thing shrieked in a voice that shifted quickly through a range of pitches, and then cut off as it fell over, barely a couple of yards away from us. We could feel it as it hit the dirt, and oddly bluish blood began running out of its face where the spikes had entered its brain through those hateful eyes.

After a few moments of shocked silence, Ron whispered, "Wicked."

The downside of an immense lawn around a thick-walled castle was that even my exploding charm hadn't been loud enough to draw attention from the inside, so after a brief conference about what to do, the three of us walked back to the castle, our adrenaline crash making us wobbly in the legs.

In all honesty, if Ron had gone to get help, he might have had a hard time being coherent or believable enough to get much, but Percy was a prefect and not prone to exaggeration. So we quickly had McGonagall, Filch, Flitwick, and Kettleburn down to look at the creature and potentially go look for Hagrid and the twins. Fortunately, by the time we were heading back down to where we'd fought, I could make out Hagrid's silhouette and magical lantern coming out of the woods, flanked by the twins and Fang, dragging something huge behind him.

I hadn't had much to do with Professor Kettleburn, who was an older wizard with magical prosthetics for both of his legs and one of his arms. Upon seeing the corpse of the monster he let out a whistle and excitedly said, "A leucrotta! These haven't been in Britain for centuries! Amazing. Shame you couldn't take it alive. Ornery buggers."

"It tried to trick us into splitting up so it could pick off Ron," I explained.

"Oh, yes. Clever predators, these. Children make an excellent meal." Ron looked like he was going to vomit again.

"Oy! There's another one!" shouted Fred, and as Hagrid got closer I could tell that he was dragging a leucrotta of his own. One of the absurdly large crossbow bolts that fit in Hagrid's hand-held ballista protruded from the beast's eye socket.

"I see!" barked Kettleburn. "A mated pair, I'd wager! One tried to draw off the bulk of the group, leaving the others undefended."

As Hagrid dragged his up, a terrible stench came with them, and I could see that, in addition to the quarrel in its eye, their leucrotta's face was covered in something brown. "Did you… hit it in the face with a dungbomb?" I asked the twins.

"Our spells just bounced off and we needed a distraction for Hagrid to shoot it," shrugged George.

"I hated to kill the poor thing," boomed Hagrid, "but it came after the boys an' it wouldn't stop."

"He did ask  _ very  _ politely," said Fred.

"Look at the serrations on these antlers, Hagrid!" enthused Kettleburn. "And the pattern on the fur! Even the ones I saw on display weren't nearly this distinctive. These are excellent specimens! I wonder where they came from?"

"Well, until the two of you figure that out," lectured McGonagall, clearly upset at the entire situation, "we'll need to keep students far away from the forest."

I didn't voice my suspicion, because the Hogwarts staff didn't seem to want to believe in what they considered fairy tales. But given how well the iron spikes had worked, I figured these had come from the Nevernever. And that was terrifying, because nothing bigger than doxies was supposed to be able to get out.


	11. Stone Faced 11: Love Life

##  Threat Assessment

Bob, my skull-bound assistant, was a powerful magical library that ran on smut, and it took me until a week after school was back in session to find a new source and an opportunity to have a private conversation.

"Harry, these are  _ nasty _ . I love it. Where did you find these?" chattered the skull, happily.

"The school librarian has a huge collection of risque romance novels," I explained. I was half thinking about telling the twins about Bob, because the reasons they  _ imagined  _ I'd wanted them to lift a few of the books were probably going to get me in trouble some day.

"Well, she has  _ excellent  _ taste." A skull shouldn't be able to leer, and yet. "What are we doing tonight?"

With a bunch of effort drawing runes and circles in chalk, I'd put some silencing and locking charms on the spare classroom I'd set up in, and hoped any school officials would buy that I didn't want my enchanting interrupted rather than that I didn't want anyone to see me talking to an arguably dark artifact. "Working on a transfiguration focus and talking about magic resistant creatures."

"Transfiguration foci are hard," Bob admitted. "It's one of the advantages of a wand. Each transfiguration is so different, it's hard to put in a generic matrix. What do you want to transfigure?"

"Ran into some leucrotta last week, and needed iron spikes to fight them. Wouldn't have been able to do it fast enough without help from one of the other students."

"Leucrotta. Hate those guys. Won't shut up. I see why you want to talk about creatures. I mean, if all you wanted was something to turn out spikes, that  _ might  _ be doable. But it would probably be pretty limited about what you could  _ start  _ with. Why don't you just carry some spikes?"

I frowned at how limited a focus was going to be for this. "I'd really hoped for something small that would get me a bunch of different offensive materials. Iron for fae, salt for spirits, maybe some lead shot for other things. I don't think I should just stuff my pockets full of that kind of thing while wandering around a school."

"Utility belt!" exclaimed the skull.

"You read  _ Batman _ ?" I asked, surprised based on his normal reading material.

"Poison Ivy and Catwoman," he said, as if that explained everything, and maybe it did.

"Anyway, I don't think I could carry a reasonable amount on a bunch of pouches without it being really obvious and heavy. And too many extension charms that close together shouldn't be arithmantically possible…"

"Maybe for normal wizard math," he scoffed. "You just have to make sure you stagger the extra-dimensional direction each one points so they don't overlap, and anchor it all in a very stable material with some failsafes." He looked at my pile of enchanting supplies, including the hides Hagrid had given me for Christmas. "Is that thestral hide over there? That will be perfect."

While it wasn't remotely what I'd come in expecting to do for my next project, Bob was the expert and I couldn't fault his logic. So I spent a while copying out the rune and matrix logic I'd need to enchant a thestral-skin belt to hold way more than it ought to. It was much more elegant than what I'd done on my own with my charmed bag.

Finally approving my draft of the project, Bob asked, "So you fought leucrotta at Hogwarts? Not supposed to be many of those outside of India."

"That's what Hagrid and Kettleburn thought," I admitted. "We had a troll get let into the castle a few months ago, and someone gave it a student's sweater to try to go after her. I don't know if the same person got some leucrotta. It went after one of her friends."

"Can't convince a leucrotta to do anything but be a jerk," Bob disagreed. "Try to ask, compel, or trick one into doing what you want and it will do the opposite just to spite you. They  _ will _ go after kids and dogs without prompting, though. Think they're delicious."

"I guess someone still could have let them onto the grounds, knowing Ron was going to be the smallest kid around over the break and liked to play outside…" I sounded dubious.

"But you thought to use iron to attack it for a reason," Bob finished.

"The professors did think they looked different than ones you normally see, even in India," I sighed, admitting to my hunch. "Damnit, Bob, it was as big as a moose. Nothing that big is supposed to be able to get out of the Nevernever."

"Veil isn't what it used to be," he mused. "Wizards have been using it as a highway for centuries, and too much space-warping doesn't help it either."

"Says the guy who just taught me to cram a dozen extension charms into one belt," I snarked.

"With the Nevernever footprint this castle has, a utility belt is barely going to register," he disagreed. "Still, it  _ is _ weird that multiple big things got out. I wonder if anyone's messing with the raths."

"What?" I gulped.

"If you apparate from one of the old 'faerie mounds' you can go further, easier. But it's kind of like a slingshot. You stretch the Veil so much to launch yourself that it can temporarily warp enough that opportunistic beasts can get through."

"That bitch," I said, angry and guilty. "It's my fault. My godmother told me how to do that. Even gave me a map of where to find all the raths in Britain. I used the one at Hogsmeade to get down to London to pick you up."

"Huh. Well, yeah. That would do it." I thought the largely amoral skull was going to leave it at that, but he added, "I wouldn't beat yourself up, though. She can probably do the same thing whenever she wants, so it's not like she tricked you into doing something she couldn't."

"Maybe," I sulked, worried I'd unleashed faerie predators on the school and wondering if Bellatrix had intended for me to do that. I also needed to figure out how to warn Percy, Penny, and Oliver  _ not  _ to take advantage of the raths without admitting that I was inadvertently responsible for putting Percy and his brothers in danger.

"Anyway. Once you have pockets full of Kryptonite, is that all you needed to know about magic-resistant creatures?"

"Was that another  _ Batman _ reference?" I boggled.

"Well, that, and some of the workers at the post office were playing the new Spin Doctors album and I was bored stuck in my box. I know all the lyrics. Want to hear?"

"No thanks," I told him, not totally sure what he was even talking about but sure his singing voice wasn't a talent. "And, actually, I had another question about magic resistance that we've been banging our heads against. What do you know about the vulnerabilities of dementors and other wraiths?"

"Your premise is faulty," he explained. "Dementors aren't wraiths. They're corporeal and soulless. Admittedly, they're basically undead lethifolds with a bunch of other dark magic worked into them, but they're not wraiths. Those are always incorporeal and all they  _ are _ is souls."

"So it's just a ghost?"

"Not really. Ghosts are more like a shadow of a soul left in the world by your magic. The soul moves on, but if you had unfinished business your magic basically sears an imprint of you into the world. Ghosts can't really change, make long-term plans, or get over what they were like when they died. And they can't possess a body."

I blanched, thinking about the thing that Justin had summoned. "Possess a body?"

"It takes a lot of dark magic and sheer bloody-mindedness to become a wraith, Harry. The mechanisms for making sure mortal souls leave the world when you die are core components of reality. You're wearing your mom's necklace. Think about how one of the most powerful legendary artifacts just lets you  _ talk  _ to the departed, and explicitly  _ can't  _ bring the dead back to life. People that become wraiths aren't just looking to float around for eternity, they're usually trying to claw their way back into the world. The ones that  _ don't _ want to steal a new body are scarier than the ones that do. Tolkien knew what he was talking about: there have been things like the Nazgul throughout history and they were  _ terrible _ ."

"Is there a way to fight them?"

"Well… actually… remember how I said that dementors  _ weren't _ wraiths? Let's talk about how the patronus charm works…"

"Soul magic," I said, dropping an ancient tome on the library table in front of Percy and Penny. It had taken me a few days after Bob had put me on the right track to find a useful reference in the school library. I wasn't about to tell them about the original provider of my information, so I needed a more acceptable source of the details.

"Summoning Angels," Percy read from the title page of the book bound in long-yellowed ivory leather. "Did you find this in the historical fiction section, Harry?"

"Yeah," Penny added, flipping through the ancient vellum pages of the large book, "I've never heard of a witch or wizard who believed in angels and didn't get it from muggle religion."

"Two good reasons for that," I allowed, because I'd had the same questions for Bob. "Whether or not anything about it was true, the wizarding world soured on mainstream religions really hard during the witch hunts. And the angels had stopped showing up long before that because the goetic wizards kept trying to bind them like demons." I gave it a beat. "Yes, there are also demons. Nogtails, grindylows, and some other magic beasts are descended from earthbound ones."

They flipped through the book for a few more minutes, studying for OWLs temporarily forgotten. It was beautifully illustrated, even if the handwritten Middle English text was difficult to parse. Finally, Percy admitted, "This  _ does _ look authoritative. I need to do more research. So what is this about soul magic?"

I wondered if I should have prepared visual aids, or at least had some paper to draw on, as I started to explain, "According to this book, if an angel wanted to grant favor to a wizard, it could provide an ability to form magic directly from that wizard's soul. It was basically the opposite of demonic bargains to channel energy from the fires of hell. The book's name for it was dumb, so I've been thinking of it as  _ soulfire _ , since it's the opposite of hellfire."

They'd found the page I marked about it, and Penny started to slowly translate the book out loud, "And amongst the powers of these arts came conjurations of great strength, invulnerable wards, and," her voice rose in excitement, "the ability to harm those thought unassailably steeped in darkness."

"That  _ is _ a better reference than our previous efforts, Percy admitted. "But if angels no longer grant favors to wizards…"

I nodded. "If we could somehow get imbued with soulfire, we wouldn't even need a spell to harm wraiths and dementors, just put it into any other offensive spell. But that's not likely to happen. However," I flipped to the second section I marked, "there is one known spell that uses soul magic."

"Yes! We  _ were _ on the right track all along!" Penny exclaimed, seeing what was clearly a description of a prototype of the patronus charm.

"So the patronus uses energy from your soul, not just happy thoughts?" Percy asked, then clearly thought of something. "That would actually explain why dark wizards have a hard time casting it, even if they have something to be very happy about. Dark magic is supposed to be damaging to the caster's soul."

I nodded, frowning. "What Quirrell left out in his lesson about Unforgivables is that using magic to kill, compel, and cause pain can cause wounds and fractures in your soul. Even killing or torturing someone with non-dark spells, like the fire-making charm, can cause problems. The Unforgivables are so focused on what they do it makes it worse."

I lapsed into musing about how wounded my soul must be having used a dark spell to kill Justin, even if I hadn't meant to. That gave them time to think it through for a couple more minutes before Penny spoke up. "We're on the right track, but the patronus just creates a protector. It's more like what the book said about making strong conjurations and wards. It's not meant to be offensive. At best, I've heard a strong patronus can shove a dementor around. I don't know if it's enough to come up with an offensive spell."

"That's where I'm stuck too," I admitted.

Percy was looking a little inspired, though. "Hellfire is the opposite of soulfire, right? I recall a book suggesting that the earliest dark magic was taught by demons. What if dark curses are based on demonic magic the same way the patronus is based on soul magic?"

"That's brilliant, Percy!" exclaimed the Ravenclaw prefect, not noticing that she'd grabbed his arm in excitement and that he'd blushed as red as his hair. "If we could diagram the arithmancy of the patronus and compare it to a dark spell with a similar enough effect, we could see if there are parts that are the instructions for using, well, light instead of darkness. Then replace those parts in an offensive dark spell."

"Fiendfyre," I said, thinking of the bestial fire construct it had summoned, so similar to the protector imago of the patronus.

Percy managed to focus and allowed, "No protective component, but we might not find a protective dark spell, let alone one that is at all similar. The problem is that the spell is highly restricted. Maybe the headmaster will let us into the restricted section if we explain what we want to learn it for…"

"We won't have to go the restricted section," I admitted, "I already know how to cast it."

##  Drama Club

I needed to charge McGonagall more for all the tutoring I was doing.

With the irrepressibility of youth, Ron didn't seem to be traumatized by nearly getting eaten by a leucrotta. But he did intellectually understand the danger he'd been in, and was keen to keep getting defense tutelage from me and his brother. It didn't help that Quirrell wasn't teaching anyone much, and that wasn't unusual for the defense position. Everyone said it had been cursed, and it had been decades since a professor had lasted more than a year. Pickings were getting slim for talented instructors.

When it became clear that I was teaching Hermione and Seamus to use foci, and I was tutoring Ron in defense, it didn't take long for Neville Longbottom to think that he should be getting the same attention from me as his friends. I wondered when the other first-years would want special treatment from me.

His parents were aurors, so Neville planned to get dueling tutelage at home during holidays, though was happy to show up to Ron's sessions when Ron wanted a dueling partner that wasn't years ahead of him. Similarly, Neville didn't lack the finesse that kept me and Seamus from using wands effectively, so didn't see a particular need to learn to use foci. However, when he found out I was going to be working on some enchanting projects, he was immediately interested, for the opposite reason I was.

My magical power was way ahead of my control. Slower magic, like rituals and enchanting, gave me the opportunity to set up a stable magical construct and then just dump power in without worrying so much about it misfiring. Neville was on the other end of the scale from me as far as power went, and I'd even heard kids that didn't like him call him a squib. He had a hard time putting a lot of power into spells. He thought maybe enchanting would allow him to essentially trickle-charge more powerful effects than he could do in the moment.

Hermione had been, of course, interested in getting her own head start on runes, and the twins had also been surprisingly interested. I hadn't realized they were taking runes as one of their electives, but it quickly became clear they had just as much interest in making enchanted toys and jokes as they had in deploying them. Percy and Penny dropped in when their schedules allowed.

One evening toward the end of January it was just me, Neville, Hermione, and Penny in the runes workshop. Percy had an early prefect patrol and the twins had detention. The two first-years had mostly sat quietly watching Penny and me work on our projects, since they were still a long way from even having the rudiments of being able to help. Neville eventually spoke up and said, "I still don't understand. You can't just be writing the runes or anyone could do it. What are you  _ actually  _ doing with enchanting?"

"You know you don't have to raise your hand, right, Hermione?" I asked the muggleborn, who still sometimes got excited and reached for the sky when she knew something. "You want to explain?"

She nodded and started reciting a memorized explanation from a textbook that should have been way too advanced for her. "All magic is about intent. When casting a spell, the proper wand movements and words create a shape for the magic to take, but your  _ intent  _ causes your magic to enter this created matrix. Similarly, runes can create their own long-lasting matrix based on their signifiers, but it is the witch or wizard's intent that fills the space created by the runes and empowers the object or ritual."

"So, putting down runes is basically instead of waving your wand and saying the words?" Neville summarized.

I glanced at the blond Ravenclaw, knowing this was the same topic that had us arguing in our first runes class, but explained, "Basically. But the devil's in the details."

Penny looked ready to jump in, so I let her continue the explanation, and she said, "There's a lot of arithmantic significance in wand movements and words. If you write down a spell's wand motions and how to pronounce the words, you don't even really have to tell someone what it's supposed to do. If I had you learn this wand movement and then told you to say ' _ Wingardium leviosa _ ' while you were doing it, and you'd never even heard of the levitation charm, it would probably still levitate what you're pointing at."

"Unless you're Seamus," Neville said and Hermione grinned.

Penny looked confused, so I explained, "Seamus Finnegan tends to cause things to catch fire and explode whenever he tries something new. It's why I'm teaching him to use foci instead of a wand. But that's because he's getting the gestures and words slightly wrong.  _ Somehow  _ that usually accidentally creates an unstable matrix that can blow up."

The prefect shook her head at the bad luck of Gryffindors, but went on, "Runes aren't exactly like casting a spell. I could write runes on an object that I was enchanting, and then someone could create a duplicate of the object or just use really good penmanship to copy what I did onto their own object. But mine would work when I put power into it, and the copies wouldn't. Because the runes don't actually do anything on their own. This is Eihwaz," she said, sketching the rune. "It's used to mean 'defense' and you'll see it on most protective enchantments."

"That's on Harry's shield bracelet!" Hermione said, recognizing it. I nodded and shook the bracelet out of my sleeve to show her and Neville that the rune did, in fact, show up on a lot of the charms hanging from the jewelry.

"Right," Penny continued, "but it's not the only rune on there, and it's not just put on there arbitrarily. You have to understand the spell you're trying to create, ideally on an arithmantic level, then place the runes to match that in a way that resonates with you." With a nod to what I'd explained earlier in the year, she finished, "The runes are really just a visual aid for you, to make it easier for your mind and magic to press the energy of the spell into the object."

Hermione seemed to get it, but Neville still looked like he wasn't quite there, so I just said, "If you could hold the whole spell in your head all at once, you wouldn't need the runes. They're just there to make it easier to imagine the spell and will it into the object."

He finally seemed to get it, and proposed, "So if I made a good copy of your shield bracelet, it wouldn't be magic, but it would be easy for you to enchant it the same way you did the first time?"

I nodded, and said, "That's how they make so many magical toys and candies and such. You get it working once and then have the same wizard do the same enchantment over and over."

Penny added, "You do it enough, especially for simple things like chocolate frogs, and you don't need the runes anymore. Pay attention for when runes show up on your frogs, because that probably means someone new started at the company and doesn't have the spell memorized yet."

"How long does it take to learn to do this?" he asked, suddenly struck by the enormity of it.

"You do really basic stuff at the end of your first year of runes, and more and more the longer you're in it. Harry's ahead of the rest of us because he had to know it to make his own foci, but I can at least mostly follow what he's doing."

Both of the first-years nodded, not really getting it but deciding that it didn't seem impossible that they would by the time they were our age. Though I suspected that Hermione would try it even earlier, especially since she was interested in foci and ritual magic.

Penny's watch chimed. Somehow she'd spelled it to work like a digital alarm clock, with multiple alarms at different times. "Ten minutes to curfew," she warned us. "Why don't you two head back and I'll walk Harry up when we're done packing up."

"The advantages of being friends with prefects," I grinned at her. She smiled shyly back and turned to pack her enchanting gear up, but I thought I caught a bit of a blush, which confused me.

It did, in fact, take me past curfew to get to a safe stopping point where none of my enchantments were in a state they'd fall apart from being unfinished, and then put my gear up. As we closed down the lab room and headed toward the towers, there was a minute of strangely tense silence before Penny mentioned, "Hogsmeade weekend coming up."

Thrown by her blush earlier but still mostly oblivious, I said, "Yeah. I'll have to figure out a way to entertain myself while you and Percy are off. I wonder if Oliver wants to hang out or if he's asked someone…" I trailed off as I realized she'd stopped walking. Behind me, she had a weird, unhappy look on her face, and I blundered on, "Has Percy not actually asked you yet?"

" _ Percy _ is going to ask me?"

Dumb 16-year-old that I was, I missed the emphasis and just got offended at my roommate for dragging his heels on asking the girl he was in love with out for Valentine's day. I just said, "He said he was going to.  _ Days _ ago, actually."

I was too dense to follow the lightning-fast series of emotions that flitted across the blond Ravenclaw's face, but after a couple of seconds she said, "Oh. Okay. I, um, just remembered that I have to get straight to the tower. Can you get back to Gryffindor safely?"

"I think so. Good night, Penny."

"Good night, Harry," she coughed out, before scurrying away from me toward Ravenclaw tower. I watched her leave with a frown, confused in the way that only oblivious teen boys can be about what had just happened, and then headed toward my own tower.

##  Friday I’m in Love

February 14th was on a Friday, with the Hogsmeade weekend to follow. Friday was usually a free day for me and Percy, with the Gryffindor first and third years busy all day, and Penny busy most of the day, so we'd started using it for OWL prep. Well, I studied for OWLs all day, and Percy actually spent a bunch of time on his homework while shooting me dirty looks for ignoring my own.

At least, that was a normal Friday, and until breakfast on the 14th I had no reason to believe it would be an unusual day. Obviously, with a busy day of class and the weekend right there, everyone would wait for Saturday to celebrate Valentine's Day. Obviously.

They did  _ not _ .

Several girls were hanging out in the Gryffindor common room when Percy, Oliver, and I headed down to go to breakfast. Alexis Marie, the dark-haired prefect, seemed to be waiting for Oliver, and immediately peeled him off to go down to the great hall. Behind her was a girl who I thought was a year behind us with reddish-brown hair. "Want to walk me to breakfast, Harry?" she asked.

I'd maybe said five words to her in passing over the year, and only really recognized her as another of Hagrid's student friends who was as mad as he was about magical creatures. "Sure… Mathilda?" I guessed, pretty sure she had the same name as a Roald Dahl novel.

Her grin showed I'd gotten it right, and I thought I saw several of the other girls in the room deflate. I shot Percy a look over her head trying to convey my confusion about what the hell was happening, and he just shrugged, equally clueless.

As we walked ahead of Percy out of the common room, I took a stab at why she might have wanted to talk to me, given her interest in creatures, "Did Hagrid show you the leucrottas?"

"Yes. They're fascinating! I didn't think I'd see one in person without taking a trip to India. So large up close! And you killed one?" Her phrasing was staccato, and she was Welsh, maybe? I hadn't really figured out how to distinguish British accents.

"Percy was the MVP," I nodded back to the prefect, trailing behind us. "He kept everything under control and transfigured the spikes."

"Yes! Clearwater's a lucky girl," she acknowledged, realizing Percy was still within earshot.

"You  _ did  _ invite her to Hogsmeade, right?" I asked my roommate.

"I… mentioned it in passing," he hedged. "She has been fairly taciturn lately." He wasn't wrong. Penny had been a little distant since our conversation after the enchanting session, with both me and Percy. "Definitely today. By lunch, certainly."

"If Percy hasn't actually asked her out," I wondered to Mathilda, "I guess the rumor is that he's going to? Since you said she was lucky?"

"That is the rumor, yes," she said, slightly cagily. "That the romance in your study group is definitely  _ Percy  _ and Penny. Took months for that to be clear! So what are you doing for Hogsmeade tomorrow, Harry?"

"Guess Oliver is going with Alexis," I mused. Without the study group to hang out with, I didn't have a lot of reason to hang out around a town that basically became a glorified shopping mall for the students. My finances were still extremely limited. "I'll probably see if Dervish and Banges has any deals. Maybe check Pippin's for potions ingredients." I was clearly waiting for someone to provide me with an engraved invitation. Those invitations would be forthcoming.

We made it down to breakfast with Mathilda getting strangely frustrated at my attempts to make casual conversation. I usually didn't get mail, the lunch invitation from Malfoy at the previous Hogsmeade being the main exception. So when the owls started showing up with morning post, I was surprised to have over a dozen envelopes dropped on me. I didn't get the  _ most _ of anyone I could see, but I was certainly up there.

"Merlin, Harry, leave some witches for the rest of us," snarked Fred.

"Not that we're into that kind of thing, yet," added George.

"Right, you don't want to get them interested too early in your school career, or you'll lose valuable prank research time," explained Fred.

"Next year?" George asked his brother.

"After the holidays," nodded Fred, finalizing their dating calendar.

"You sure you don't want some of these?" I shrugged at the twins, flipping through the stack of mail and seeing the names of a bunch of girls I'd barely said a word to.

Mathilda, who'd sat across from me and looked put out when I'd received so many letters now looked confused. Leaning forward, she said quietly enough that it wouldn't actually carry too far down the table, "Harry are you… only interested in wizards?"

"What? No. Why?" I asked her, still not sure why it was suddenly everyone's business.

"It's just," she tried to explain, as if to a child, "everyone thought you and Penny might have something going on. Then the rumor was that it was her and Percy. Which meant everyone had a shot with you that they hadn't realized."

"Why would everyone care? None of them have even really talked to me before today. Including you."

Percy had taken off his glasses and was pinching the bridge of his nose as if he had a headache, and the twins, who'd overheard from two seats down, glanced at each other before George explained, "Harry. Is there not a mirror in the fifth-years' bathroom?"

I shrugged. "I'm nothing special."

"Obviously neither of us can speculate on whether you fit the 'handsome' part of 'tall, dark, and handsome,' but you've definitely got the other two going for you and witches are supposed to be into that," elaborated Fred.

"You fought a troll and that moose-monster," added George.

"You have a mysterious and tragic past," noted Fred.

"You've got an American accent," tagged in George.

"And you certainly have the biggest staff in the whole school," finished Fred, snickering.

While my self-esteem had never been particularly low, I'd also never needed to worry about dating. Elaine and I were the only ones of the same age we knew and could talk to about magic, and we'd gotten together basically the moment we both realized our hormones had kicked into gear. I'd honestly never considered whether I might have an easy or a hard time getting a date. Plus, at the time, I was damaged goods. "I'm honestly not interested in dating right now," I shrugged.

"Today  _ would  _ be a good time to decide to, if you  _ were _ ," said Percy, somewhat hypocritically, given his delay on talking to Penny. I wondered if part of it was trying to get me paired off if, as Mathilda said, he was worried that Penny was interested in me. And, of course, that was the moment I realized what she'd been asking the other night and why she hadn't been talking to me.

I sighed and rubbed my head, picking up Percy's headache at my own obliviousness. "I'm sorry, Mathilda, but it's true. Chalk it up to the whole 'mysterious and tragic past' thing the twins mentioned. My head's still not in a place where I've even been thinking about witches. Or wizards." I turned to Percy and asked, "When you talk to Penny, can you please tell her I need to apologize at her earliest convenience?"

As awkward as it was, he passed on the message and I met her at our study table in the library during her mid-morning free period. "I'm sorry for the other night," I told her. "I had no idea anyone might be interested, but, in particular, I met you knowing how much Percy liked you and never thought of you in that way. I thought you understood that too." Feeling like that was a non-apology, I added, "But I'm sorry I was too thick-headed and hurt your feelings."

"So you've  _ never  _ been interested?" she asked, still looking a little hurt, though better after the apology.

"Please don't spread this around, because it's pretty private," I began, figuring I had to tell her most of it. "My girlfriend, who I thought was the love of my life, betrayed me, set me up to be a victim of a dark magic ritual, and then  _ probably _ died when I escaped and the ritual went bad. That was only six months ago, and I don't have any closure. I seriously haven't thought about  _ anyone  _ romantically since then."

"But… if… when you did…"

While I seriously hadn't thought about it, the blond Ravenclaw looked and acted enough like Elaine that, if we dated, I'd be admitting I had a type. For my own sanity, I probably needed to date someone different enough to avoid the risk of flashes of the boggart Elaine. Maybe an outgoing, highly practical, dark-haired-and-complexioned girl would do the trick. Rather than point that out, I asked, "Are you just not interested in Percy? Because he really likes you."

"No, Percy's okay. It's just, he's not–"

While I knew she was about to say "you," I cut her off and tried, "On a corrupt auror's hit list? Hung up on his ex? Planning to disappear to America and the muggle world after graduation? Profoundly damaged?"

"You're not as damaged as you think you are, Harry," she said with a sad smile. "You should let yourself be happy. But thanks for the apology, and letting me down easy."

I nodded. In my mind, I hoped she was right. But, in my heart, I knew that if she knew all my secrets, she'd take it back and wonder why she'd ever been interested.


	12. Stone Faced 12: Fantastic Creatures

##  Lights in the Darkness

Things settled back into a rhythm as spring approached. Gryffindor won the quidditch match against Hufflepuff, putting Oliver in a better mood. Our study group expanded to include most of the fifth-year Gryffindors and Ravenclaws when we worked on defense, since Quirrell's performance in the subject had degraded even further over the winter, and he seemed tired all the time. I did pretty well in class, and Percy and Penny were talented as well, so especially with the impromptu sessions I'd been giving the Weasleys and friends, there was a lot of interest in our help.

McGonagall hadn't been moved by my mention that maybe I should get some extra tutoring fees for the defense group and the enchanting training, but apparently someone in Gryffindor had overheard. While the Weasleys didn't have extra money for the lessons, the Longbottoms and Grangers were significantly better off, and Neville and Hermione started quietly slipping me a few galleons and pounds, respectively, here and there. It was appreciated, since enchanting wasn't a cheap hobby, even with school resources and my Christmas gifts.

And it wasn't long before I had reason to appreciate all the work I'd been putting into it.

One night in March, it was just our smaller study group of me, Percy, Penny, and Oliver. We'd gone over some transfiguration and charms, then made a sideline toward whether anyone had gotten any closer on the arithmantic comparison of the patronus to fiendfyre. We had some ideas, but nothing that was elegant enough that we felt like we could successfully lift it out and apply it to another curse. We'd at least consistently been getting closer to casting a patronus, and had all managed the white mist that was supposed to be the first step in a corporeal manifestation. I'd been fortunate to discover that my mother's amulet seemed designed as a focus for multiple forms of light magic, and I could use it for the patronus; without it, I'd have been having an even harder time doing it with no focus at all.

"Almost curfew," Oliver mentioned, clearly not keeping up with the mathematical discussion. "Goin' to head back to the tower."

"Don't wait up on us," grinned Penny. "We'll patrol our way back in a bit."

Oliver and I gave the two prefects a smirk. After her initial hesitancy to get into a relationship with Percy, Penny had apparently found  _ something  _ she liked. The two had been finding plenty of opportunities to make out (or "snog" as the locals liked to call it). "Pince usually starts kicking people out from the east side, so you'll have more time on the west," I mentioned.

They both grinned and grabbed their stuff to head that way, as I left the library with the quidditch captain. "Glad to see Percy loosen up," Oliver mentioned, as we walked. "He's at least three times easier to deal with since you got here."

I shrugged, "Hogwarts students just seem to need an outside perspective and a kick in the ass."

"Yourself excepted, o'course?" he smirked.

"I know what my problems are," I sighed. "Doesn't make them any easier to solve."

"Just seems weird that there's so many witches interested in  _ helpin'  _ you solve them, and you're not interested." He caught my look of annoyance, and added, "But I should definitely stay on m'own goals and not tell you how to defend your–"

Oliver was cut off as a red light smashed into him from the side and he slumped over. I barely had time to turn to note that the spell had come from a dark corridor to our left before another bolt of red light hit me square in the chest.

I felt it dissipate into my warded vest as I shook my shield bracelet out and hissed out, " _ Protego! _ " After a moment of peering through my shield into the darkness waiting for the next attack, I heard booted feet slapping against the stone and running off. I kept my shield up but tapped Oliver with my staff and said, " _ Rennervate! _ "

Shaking his head and realizing he'd slumped to the floor, he asked, "What in Merlin's name just happened?"

"Someone fast cast a pair of stunners at us without saying the words. Hit both of us dead center from at least fifty feet down that hallway."

"That's… damn, that's some good castin'. Why aren't we both out?" He groaned, standing up and, as an afterthought, readying his wand.

"I wear a vest that can take a spell or two. Heard about getting hexed in the halls, and also that first day in defense class. Wasn't actually sure it would stand up to a stunner. Might not have if they'd tried for force instead of stealth. Ran off after I got a shield up."

"We better tell McGonagall," he suggested, still groggy from his unexpected nap, and favoring a knee that he'd knocked into the stone floor.

A few minutes later, we'd caught her in her rooms, fortunately before she'd started getting ready for bed, and told her what happened. "I'll mention it to Albus. Unfortunately, if you didn't see who it was, there's not much we can do. Let's hope it was an attempt at a prank." She frowned, considering how few people could probably have managed the feat, upper-years all. "Be careful to travel in larger groups this close to curfew. It may be the quidditch rivalry flaring up. Five points for preparation and protecting your friend, Mr. Dresden."

The news traveled fast through Gryffindor when we got back, and the next day there was a rash of detentions as various members of my house got into impromptu arguments and hallway duels with Slytherins after accusing them of the attack. It got bad enough that Dumbledore stood up at dinner and asked everyone to knock it off. "The investigation is ongoing. Students are not to hex one another in the hallways, even if you feel your house was hexed first."

After my time in the orphanage, I'd never felt completely safe sleeping in a room with other boys at Hogwarts, so was a light sleeper at the best of times. Thus, I probably would have woken anyway that night, when someone tore open the curtains on my bed not long after midnight. But the caterwauling charm I'd placed on the curtains guaranteed it. Unfortunately, it didn't save me from the " _ Stupefy! _ " that the shadowy figure cast in at me. And I didn't wear my vest to bed.

But the alarm wasn't just for me. I came to with Percy standing by my bed in his pajamas, wand out from having just revived me. Oliver was standing over a boy's body, bound tightly in conjured ropes. Our other two roommates, Lennox and Horton, were groggily covering the room. "It was Meakin," Percy said, gesturing to the boy on the floor.

In the dim candles that had been hastily lit in the room, and with Percy's naming him, I recognized him as a Gryffindor fourth-year. Top of his class for our house, everyone expected him to be a prefect next year. He probably would be able to cast a stunner, even though it was a little advanced for him, but something didn't seem right. "There's no way it was him last night," I grumbled.

"Unless he's secretly some kinda prodigy at stunners," Oliver nodded. He nudged the incapacitated boy with his foot. "What's goin' on, Cyril?"

"Have to… have to… have to stun Dresden. Bring him outside. Do it quietly. Wait until they're all asleep." The boy had a glassy look, and was babbling as if trying to work out for himself how it had gone wrong.

"Is he…?" asked Percy.

"Imperiused," I nodded. "I think so."

"I will get McGonagall," the prefect said. "Do not do anything to him unless he somehow gets out." He headed out of the room.

Our head of house showed up ten minutes later, this time clearly woken from bed and much less put together than the severe dress she usually affected. "Oh my!" she said, upon seeing the fourth-year and hearing him babble. With a gesture and whisper of " _ Expecto nuntius _ ," she effortlessly summoned an ethereal silver cat and told it, "Albus. I need you immediately in the Gryffindor common room. A student has been imperiused."

As the cat raced off, pointing out just how much further we had to go learning the patronus, she levitated Meakin and had us follow her down to the common room.

"I'm sorry I didn't take this more seriously yesterday," she apologized to me and Oliver. "It appears someone in the school is trying to capture Mr. Dresden."

I nodded, upset about it as well. "There can't be many people that can silently cast two stunners that fast  _ and _ cast the imperius." She nodded and I thought about it a moment more, then added, "And why is someone that good at spells just hiding in dark hallways and using fourth-years?"

"Hopefully Albus will be able to find out," she said, clipped, and I got the impression that she was both angry and worried, particularly that someone had used an Unforgivable on one of her students.

A few minutes later, Dumbledore walked into the common room. I couldn't tell whether he'd attempted to dress first, or whether the blue robe with pink starbursts was just his pajamas. "My, my, my," he fretted, examining the almost-prefect on the couch while Percy quickly summed up what had happened. "Let us see if we can get some answers." Slipping into teacher mode, he explained, "One of the worst things about the imperius curse is that it has no specific counterspell, and does not respond to the general. It would be much easier to clear people of if it did. Instead, it requires a specific ritual to clear, which works best if the command is no longer achievable." He produced a kit of specialized inks and spent several minutes using them to paint glyphs upon the fourth-year's forehead and cheeks, muttering a ritual incantation. There was a brief flash of colors and the glassy look on Meakin's face cleared, replaced with normal confusion. "Mr. Meakin, what can you tell us?"

"I didn't mean to, Dresden!" he said, panicked. "I don't know why I did that! Please, Professors, I don't know why I attacked another student!"

"Easy, my boy," the headmaster said consolingly, wordlessly dispelling the ropes binding the kid. "We don't believe you were at all responsible. We merely wonder whether you know who compelled you to do these things."

"I… I can't remember anything since lunchtime," he said, suddenly looking panicked.

While we waited, McGonagall had woken his roommates and questioned them. "Albus. None of his friends remembers seeing him after lunch today, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He was going to spend his free periods in the library, but never made it to his defense class this afternoon."

"May I look inside your mind, Mr. Meakin, to see if I can find out what happened?" Dumbledore asked, and the boy nodded. " _ Legilimens! _ " he cast, then spent a minute staring the boy in the eyes. Withdrawing, he explained, "His entire afternoon has been obliviated, and it was done well. I suspect he was taken between lunch and his class, moved to a location he could be hidden until curfew, then memory charmed and compelled."

"Who would do this, Albus?" worried McGonagall.

"Someone, I fear, who is clever but suddenly very desperate…" mused the headmaster.

The first unicorn was killed that weekend.

##  The Meaning of “A Cursed Life”

I found out about the unicorn about a week after the attack.

While I tried to be as clear as possible without coming off as conceited that dating was  _ not _ going to happen, Mathilda had maintained an effort to be friendly with me after Valentine's Day. We both had a free period before dinner on Wednesdays, and she found me reading in the common room when she burst inside, still windblown from being on the grounds.

"Harry!" she grabbed a wooden chair and dragged it right up against the plush one I was sitting in, flouncing into it. "Did you hear? I just heard it from Kettleburn in class! Hagrid found a dead unicorn in the forest. Which is  _ awful _ . But interesting! Something killed it and didn't try to eat it! But it was bleeding."

My interest in magical creatures was basically just how they related to the Nevernever, how useful they were for potions and enchanting ingredients, and whether I needed to know about them for defense class. But unicorns were in the center of that Venn diagram. "And they left the horn?"

She nodded, excited. "Right!? That was my first thought, too. Ugly one-horned mule!"

"You've seen  _ Legend _ ?"

"It's only why I decided to be a magizoologist!" she exclaimed. "I mean… Tim Curry's  _ horns _ ! Also, the unicorns, and goblins, and faeries, of course."

"But… aren't you a pureblood?"

"We're not  _ all  _ completely backwards," she explained. "Uncle Abraham convinced the Ministry that someone needs to stay on top of muggle fantasy films. You know, to make sure they're not accidentally getting too close to the truth. So we've gotten to go to the movies on the Ministry's sickle my whole life." She seemed to file away that it was something else to talk to me about, but just said, "Anyway! Dead unicorn. Very mysterious. Didn't eat it. Didn't seem to take any major components. What's unicorn blood used for, anyway?"

"Nothing good," I admitted. "I think it's illegal to trade. I've never seen it for sale. I'll… do some research."

I headed upstairs. None of the other guys were in my room, so I closed the door and fished my bag of holding out of my trunk and pulled the skull free from that. "Hey, Bob, quick question."

A nocturnal spirit by nature, Bob's eyes flickered dimly as they lit up in the tower room. Without the skull to protect him, he wouldn't even be able to be coherent in the sunlight that streamed into the tower room. "Harry? Huh? Oh. Yeah, sure, what's up?"

"Unicorns. Any natural or supernatural predators that would just make them bleed but not eat them? Also, what's their blood for?"

He yawned, the jaw of the skull latching all the way open in my hand, before saying, "No way. Unicorns are basically like those brightly colored frogs in the Amazon. You get any blood in you, you'll wish you hadn't. Nothing eats them that knows any better."

"So why would someone want unicorn blood?"

"It's pure life energy. But it's dangerous the same way as breathing pure oxygen. It's useful in all kinds of potions to create and extend life, or you can just drink it straight. But you shouldn't. After you drink it, you have a worse problem. Starts to burn you out from the inside. Pretty soon you need  _ more _ unicorn blood to keep the  _ last _ batch from killing you."

"So you'd basically already need to be dying to try it?"

"Right. And the best you can do is  _ slow down _ the problem. People have tried to weaponize it into poisons. But there's intentionality involved. You have to know what you're drinking. If you accidentally drink unicorn blood, it doesn't do anything. Also, who's the babe?"

"What. Is. That? Other than  _ awesome _ !?" Mathilda exclaimed from behind me.

"Hell's bells," I groaned. I'd been so engrossed in what Bob was saying that I hadn't heard the door open. And since I didn't have a focus for the locking spell, I was bad at remembering to use it. I strode around the brunette and pushed the door back closed where she'd slipped in after glancing to make sure no one else was in the hallway. "Can I trust you to keep a secret?"

"Depends on who you killed to make a talking skull," she said, apparently suddenly realizing that I had a foot of height on her, she was trapped in a room with me, and I'd been warning her about my mysterious past for a month. Strangely, it didn't seem to make her afraid, just slightly more cautious.

"Nobody. I inherited him. But he's so cool that a ton of people would try to steal him. So he has to stay a secret," I wheedled. I saw Bob's eyes flicker as he preened at being called cool.

"I'll bet. Tutelary skull? Isn't that dark magic?"

"I'm not a tutelary skull," Bob said, offended. "I just happen to live in this skull. Because it's nice, and I haven't found anything better."

"Fair enough," she allowed. "You'd be the expert."

I tried to make her a deal. "If you keep it a secret, I'll let you have supervised access for research questions. I assume you heard about the unicorn blood. He's way faster than looking things up in the library."

"Sold!" she grinned.

"Bob: Mathilda Grimblehawk. Mathilda: Bob."

"Pleased to meet you, Bob," she sketched an overly-dramatic curtsy. "What are you, anyway? Spirit-being?"

"Greater wizarding academia's lack of knowledge about spirits is  _ adorable _ ," Bob told her. "But, yes, they'd probably classify me as a spirit-being. Watch out, world, they might  _ double  _ their number of known spirits in that category."

"I've wondered about that," she admitted. "Why are there so few known spirit types?"

"Most of us are far happier in the Nevernever." Bob yawned, "Anyway, if you have any more questions about unicorns, I'm going to need Miss Grimblehawk to lose the robe and–"

"No! All answered here!" I interrupted, shoving him back in my bag. "Sorry," I told her, probably blushing a little. "I'm not sure why a spirit of intellect is a total lech, but that's  _ another  _ good reason not to let other people know about him."

"I mean… if I  _ have  _ to strip to power the magic encyclopedia," she said, slowly reaching up to unbutton the top of her robe. Before I could remind my eyes to blink, she grinned, "Your face!" After quietly chuckling at my expense, she added, "So,  _ what's  _ the deal with the unicorn?"

I frowned, "Whoever killed it needed to stay alive, no matter the cost. And will probably need to kill another one before long. So it was someone  _ desperate… _ "

##  Easter Eggs

For a society that prided itself on being nonreligious, I found it interesting that Hogwarts' winter and spring breaks were locked to the Christian holidays. Easter could vary by weeks from year to year, but it still sat at the center of the two week break. I wondered if they had to change their lesson plans for the winter and spring semesters based on where the holiday fell.

By spring break, nothing else exceptional had happened. As far as we had heard, no more unicorns had been killed, and nobody had made another attempt to kidnap me. The only change to the status quo had been discovering I had someone to talk to about muggle media. I was gratified that Mathilda had been persistent in wanting to be my friend, since I'd genuinely missed having someone around my age to talk to about things outside the magical world.

Of course, I hadn't even thought about Hermione, either, since she seemed like she only read educational nonfiction. But she overheard me talking with Mathilda one day about how Tolkien had to have met Dumbledore to invent Gandalf, and jumped right into the conversation. It turned out that Jean and Helen Granger were dedicated science fiction buffs. Once the first-year realized that Mathilda's literary knowledge dropped dramatically the further we got from popular fantasy films, she went to the owlery with a determined look in her eyes.

A few days later, the first nerd care package from her parents showed up. She'd asked them to just grab whatever they could from the sci-fi/fantasy paperbacks slush pile at their used book store. Suddenly, young Miss Granger had currency that was far more effective than cash for paying me and Mathilda for tutoring. And I finally had something more interesting to do with my leisure time than rereading Lockhart's books or delving into the smut romance novels that Madam Pince favored.

Over the break, the castle was significantly more populated than it had been at Christmas. While some kids went home, most seemed to use the two week holiday from classes as their last chance to finish up projects and studying before the end of the year exams, especially with the late Easter meaning the break ended with only two months left in the year.

With our OWLs coming up, which were comprehensive of the previous years, Percy, Penny, Oliver, and I tapped some of our lower-year friends to exchange studying. We'd clear up anything they were still confused about, and that would help us remember the topics (or, for me, sometimes realize they were even a thing).

For first-years, Hermione, Ron, Neville, and Seamus were our usual ducklings. Second was more limited, since Katie Bell from the quidditch team was the main one any of us talked to, but Penny grabbed a couple of girls from Ravenclaw as well: Cho Chang and Marietta Edgecombe. Nearly all the rest of the Gryffindor quidditch team sat in for our third-years. For fourth-years, it was mostly just Mathilda; though we also tried to include Cyril Meakin as a "sorry you were mind controlled" gesture, he wasn't that interested and showed up rarely.

So we were sitting around the afternoon of the last Friday of the break studying fourth-year material just the four regulars and Mathilda. Both Oliver and Mathilda were looking longingly at the nice day outside the library windows, half paying attention. I was doing a little better, but missed a question Percy had asked when I saw Hagrid wander out of the library. "Didn't know he ever came in here," I mused.

"Well good for Hagrid at least, coming to the library to  _ study _ ," snarked the Weasley prefect.

"Sorry, Percy. Ummm, the opening charm is ' _ aperio _ ' but you can prefix it with the Latin for the type of object you're opening to help you visualize the right opening motion and make sure you don't just rip it apart." I considered, "Or you can use your hands, because you're not an invalid."

"You should probably leave off the editorializing on the test, Harry," giggled Penny.

Percy was about to throw someone else a quiz question, but Hermione's crew hurried over from the direction we'd seen Hagrid. They all had their precious "we are only twelve but think we've discovered something  _ important _ " looks on their faces. Neville, who was the most even-tempered of the four, elected himself spokesman and said, with a glance of apprehension at the two prefects, "We were going to go talk to Hagrid about the  _ research project _ ."

Percy and Penny knew that the kids thought Fluffy was guarding a philosopher's stone. I wouldn't have been surprised if the  _ entire school _ knew the kids' theory. When they were trying to keep a secret, they huddled together, made exaggerated squinty eyes, and talked in stage whispers. It was  _ adorable _ . But it was also irrepressible, and Percy had weeks previous put me on the duty of making sure his baby brother didn't do anything insane chasing their theory.

"I can head down with you," I offered.

"Oh! Visiting Hagrid? I'll go too," Mathilda grinned, grasping the excuse.

"I'm  _ definitely  _ goin' with 'em on whatever this research project is," mugged Oliver. "I am definitely  _ not  _ just goin' outside to go flyin' on this beautiful day."

"Fine. Leave us. Someone has to study," grumbled Percy.

"Sure. Don't want to fail your anatomy elective," I smirked at him, and he and Penny blushed.

The seven of us wandered down to the grounds, and Oliver, true to his thinly-veiled promise, waved goodbye to go to the quidditch pitch. Ron, straining to maintain loyalty over fun, quickly ran out of willpower and yelled, "Wait up, Oliver!" before running off to fly brooms and pick up quidditch pointers from the older Gryffindor.

"Would anyone else rather go flying?" Hermione huffed.

"Actually, yeah," admitted Seamus, who spent half of his flying classes in with me being tutored in foci. He dashed off after the other two, leaving me, Mathilda, Hermione, and Neville.

"Easier fit in Hagrid's hut, anyway!" Mathilda laughed, trying to mollify the bushy-haired first-year.

"Why aren't you more interested in brooms, Neville?" I asked. "Seems like all the other pureblood boys are obsessed with flying."

He shrugged, "You've seen how clumsy I am sometimes on the ground. I figure I should stick to what I'm good at."

We all admitted that was a good idea, before Hermione finally shared why we were walking across the lawn to Hagrid's hut, "Hagrid was looking for books on dragons and acting like he was up to something."

Mathilda chuckled, "He's always been mad about dragons. Wants one desperately!"

"Isn't owning a dragon in Britain illegal?" suggested Hermione.

"Definitely!" admitted the aspiring magizoologist. "Still, it would be cool to see one without having to go to a preserve. Guess none of you have met Charlie Weasley? He graduated last year and went to work on one. He made me want to work with magical creatures."

"I thought that was  _ Legend _ ," I said.

"Right! Well, at least he made me realize that working with magical creatures was a real job. And I'd get to hang around cute guys doing it," she smirked. When her blatant flirting just got a raised eyebrow from me, she laughed, then noted, "That's a  _ lot  _ of smoke coming out of Hagrid's chimney for a nice spring day."

Hagrid's ability to keep a secret was slightly worse than the first-years', and everything about his hut was currently so suspicious that a five-year-old would think he was overdoing it a little to make it obvious that something was up. His windows were all heavily curtained, and, when he opened the door to Neville's knock, a blast of sweltering heat rolled out into the nice spring day. He ushered the four of us in, and if the hut weren't so drafty I'd worry he couldn't breathe in there.

"So… yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?" he asked, after his offer of tea and stoat sandwiches was waved off.

Neville and Hermione looked like they were about to ask something else, but Mathilda had spotted the large, black egg in the roaring fire. "Hagrid! Did you get a dragon egg!?"

"Ah! That's… er…" he fiddled with his beard, trying to come up with a lie.

"Is that a ridgeback?" she continued, moving over to appraise the egg. "I didn't think they even nested in Britain. How'd you get one?"

"Er. Yes. I won it in a game o' cards last night, from a stranger. Don' rightly know where he got it. Seemed glad ter be rid of it, ter be honest."

"But what are you going to do when it's hatched?" Hermione asked.

He pulled out a library book on dragon breeding and regaled us with his plan to keep it hot in the fire until it hatched, then feed it blood and brandy.

"Hagrid, you live in a  _ wooden house _ ," she insisted.

"Wood's only half the problem," Mathilda added. "It's going to be too big to fit in here within a couple of months."

While the girls were upset about the viability of Hagrid's hut, I pulled him back to something else he'd mentioned. "This stranger that gave you the egg. What'd he look like?"

"Dunno," he shrugged, "he wouldn' take his cloak off. Never saw his face."

And, of course, Hagrid didn't think that was incredibly suspicious. I asked, "And what did you talk about while you were playing cards?"

"Yeh know, he asked about the sorta creatures I look after, and I mentioned I'd always really wanted a dragon. An' then, I can't remember too well, 'cause he kept buyin' me drinks. Oh, right, he mentioned he  _ had  _ a dragon egg, and we could play cards for it. But he wasn' sure I could handle it, so I told him after Fluffy, a dragon would be easy."

Neville gasped, "Hagrid! Did he want to know how to get past Fluffy?"

Mathilda and I shared a look, but Hagrid kept on with, "I mean, I dunno if he  _ wanted  _ ter know, but I mentioned that Fluffy's a piece o' cake because yer just play him a bit o' music and he goes straight off to sleep…" he looked horrified. "Forget I said that!"

Hermione and Neville looked just as horrified as Hagrid, suddenly realizing that a stranger had essentially bribed Hagrid for the secret of how to get past Fluffy and steal the philosopher's stone. They looked at each other like, "What are we going to do?" That was when Mathilda and I lost it, and both started laughing.

"What's so funny!?" insisted Hermione, actually stomping her foot. "The thief can get past Fluffy whenever he wants! We have to tell Dumbledore."

Wracked by a further set of giggles at the first-year's exasperation, Mathilda choked out, "You… he… tell her, Harry."

I got myself back under control, not wanting to laugh in the kids' faces but they looked so self-righteous. "Guys. Umm… like half of Gryffindor has already gotten past Fluffy."

##  Obstacle Course

Three childlike faces (one bearded and on a twelve-foot-tall body) looked at us in total confusion at my assertion that we'd already gotten past Hagrid's guardian cerberus, so I explained, "Oliver Wood and Jason Denbright figured out how to get past Fluffy about two weeks after winter break." Jason was one of the seventh-years that I wasn't too familiar with, but who was in NEWT care of magical creatures.

"I helped!" Mathilda objected.

I nodded to her, "Didn't know that. Okay, Mathilda, Oliver, and Jason figured out how to get past. Oliver's a surprisingly excellent singer."

"There's an alarm on the trap door, though," Mathilda admitted. "Jason and I didn't get out of the devil's snare before Dumbledore showed up and gave us detention for a week. Oliver managed to sneak out of it because he stayed upstairs to keep Fluffy asleep."

"Seems like it's a silent alarm to Dumbledore's office, though," I picked up the narrative. "A bunch of people started seeing how far they could get over dinner break because they knew he'd be away from the alarm for an hour."

"The keys were really hard at first. But now it's easy! The right one's so beaten up from everyone going through."

"Chessboard next, and nobody's been able to get past that before running out of time," I admitted. "Percy made everyone swear not to take Ron, because he's too little." It had actually been a bit of a challenge from me and his fellow prefects to convince Percy that the runs hadn't been rule-breaking he needed to crack down on, but he eventually relented, even if he hadn't been willing to make an attempt himself.

"Hilliard Hobday and Violetta Abbot claim they got close. She's pretty good at chess," Mathilda added. I didn't know the two seventh-years well, but she, indeed, was one of the only Gryffindors who could win more than the occasional game against Ron.

"None of yer were s'posed to do tha'!" insisted Hagrid. "Those protections are there fer a reason!"

"I can't believe Dumbledore protected the stone with obstacles a bunch of students can get past!" scoffed Hermione.

"I'd like to see a devil's snare," whispered Neville.

"Sorry, Nev," I told him. "Everyone agreed not to tell the lower-years about it until we were sure it was safe."

Mathilda explained, "The devil's snare actually just freezes when you're caught too tight. The keys are only a nuisance. And Fluffy doesn't seem like he'll actually bite students."

"Of course not!" Hagrid insisted. "He's a good boy. Well trained! He only bites if he senses dark magic."

"That's going to settle some bets," she grinned. "Anyway, we're still not sure about the chess board or what's past it, though. Everyone figured we'd start taking the lower-years once we figured it out completely."

"But. But… But!" Hermione seemed slightly broken before she finally got her brain in gear. "This is what's safer than Gringotts?"

I shrugged, "It's all logic and athletics problems. With enough time, motivated first-years could probably get through it no problem. But even seventh-years don't seem to have that much of an advantage. It slows everyone down pretty equally. It's probably better than a bunch of strong wards against someone who broke into Gringotts. You're just trying to slow them down enough that Dumbledore can get down there and stop them."

"Plus Dumbledore said it was out of bounds to everyone who didn't want to die a painful death," grinned Mathilda. "He might as well have just told us there was a fun obstacle course for Gryffindors. He actually  _ gave _ me five points for 'soothing the savage beast' on top of my detention. Seemed surprised it had taken that long for someone to get in."

I chuckled, "The funny part is that there are at least two-dozen Gryffindors that know how to get past Fluffy, but the thief still went to the trouble of bribing Hagrid with a dragon egg for the secret."

Mathilda frowned, "Everyone thinks we're meatheads. They probably asked the Ravenclaws and Slytherins and assumed if they didn't know, nobody did." She sighed, "I shouldn't feel so bad. The bad guy's probably all hopped up on unicorn blood and not thinking straight."

"You think?" I asked her, not having really taken Hermione's quixotic mission to protect the philosopher's stone seriously enough to consider that it might be related to my own problem.

"Easier to assume one bad guy," she shrugged.

I realized that the other three hadn't said anything for a minute and were just staring at me and Mathilda in astonishment. "We can tell McGonagall if you're worried?" I suggested to them.

"Would we, er… hafta mention tha egg?" asked Hagrid.

"I mean… Dumbledore  _ has  _ to know that the thief could figure it out since so many people know already," I mused.

So we agreed to not bring it up for the time being. It was almost certainly, ultimately, a mistake, but  _ Hermione  _ was probably the most emotionally mature of all five of us, so it's not that surprising we erred on the side of not getting our friend in trouble.

##  A Dragon’s Gold

"Harry! I can't believe you turned your back on this!" chortled Bob. I was staring fiercely at the door to the spare classroom I'd locked and silenced. "Oooh! It's cold in here, isn't it? Harry!"

"Stars and stones, Bob, seriously, I just don't know how to explain how wrong this is!" I hissed at him without turning around. "You know you didn't have to do this," I insisted to the witch in the room.

"You're just mad that you have to steal romance novels to pay the skull," Mathilda laughed. "This is way easier than digging through books in the library."

"I'll get the romance novels  _ for  _ you," I groaned.

"Listen, Harry, he's a spirit. You're being a gentleman! It's not a big deal." Without looking her in the face, I couldn't really gauge whether she was lying. "Okay. It's safe to turn around now. I mean, it  _ would  _ have been safe before…"

As I turned, Mathilda was buttoning the top of her robe back up, regarding me with a probing look. I still wasn't sure whether she was bluffing. Over the past few weeks, she'd been slowly ramping up the flirting to very aggressive levels. Most of it was probably because I was safe to experiment on: she'd told me she was interested, I told her I wasn't dating anyone but I  _ hadn't  _ told her it made me uncomfortable. I just couldn't figure out whether she was messing with me because it was funny, or whether she was genuinely trying to see if there was a limit she needed to hit to get my attention.

Rather than talk about it, she fixed her gaze on Bob and said, "You've had your show. Now spill. Everything you know on the raising and risks of baby dragons. Norwegian Ridgebacks specifically." She sighed, "I'm just so mad I missed a dragon hatching because I was stuck in care of magical creatures  _ class _ ."

The baby dragon had hatched during second period that morning, while I was in the middle of double potions and Mathilda had her elective. The quartet of first years had been able to go see, and had regaled Mathilda about it after lunch. She was determined to help out. She'd asked me for "a study date with your friend Bob after dinner" and here we were.

While Bob explained how to nanny a dragon in extensive detail while the excitable witch took notes, I thought about the other problem. The first-years hadn't been as careful as they should have been talking about their invitation at breakfast, and Draco had overheard and spied on them during the hatching. Apparently he'd developed an intense academic rivalry with Hermione over the past few months, got on with Ron like adding water to a grease fire, and was prejudiced against Hagrid. He and Neville seemed to get on okay, interestingly enough, continuing to play the "family honor" thing more for a running joke than out of any genuine animosity.

What he hadn't done was go running to a teacher or prefect to turn them in. Maybe he was planning something longer-term, but maybe he was waiting for an offer.

As Bob finished his ten-minute monologue, Mathilda started rolling up the notes she'd made into one big scroll and said, "I'm going to run down to Hagrid's. Got to cover all this before curfew. Coming?"

"No. I need to go talk to a tiny platinum-headed Slytherin," I replied.

"Oh! Yeah. Better you than me. Don't curse him in public," she grinned, not seeming too put out that I wasn't going with her.

"If it comes to that, we have bigger problems," I mentioned. "Back in the bag, Bob," I said, sliding him into my bag of holding. Only after that did I take down the charms on the classroom door, having learned from Mathilda walking in on Bob.

Mathilda rushed out toward one of the castle exits and I headed down into the dungeons. I found an alcove near the potions classroom and waited. At the end of dinner, I'd passed a hastily-scribbled note to Malfoy to meet here just before the first detentions. If he didn't show, I'd be able to flag down the twins on their way to their regular cauldron-cleaning penance with Professor Belby. Their knowledge of where to find people was uncanny, and seemed related to the scrap of parchment they often referenced when they thought nobody was paying attention.

I didn't have to avail myself of their services, however, as Draco came sauntering down the hall with his two baby bodyguards. To be fair, they'd started to fill out recently and might be quite the intimidating pair of human bookends in another couple of years. I'd propped my staff out of easy reach and clearly had my hands empty as I leaned against the alcove, so Malfoy gave the bigger boys the signal to wait and headed over.

"You wanted to meet?" he asked, a little too casually.

"What's your price?" I asked.

"Out of your range on most things," he sneered. "Perhaps you could be more specific."

"Malfoy," I sighed. "You have leverage. Being snide about it just makes people not want to deal. Or they think you're actually confused and don't know what they're talking about."

He thought about it, and probably thought about other business deals he'd witnessed. To be fair, from my meeting with his father, I wouldn't be surprised if the elder Malfoy was overly prone to being snide as well. The British dark wizards didn't seem to have gotten the memo that the best defense against the aurors was people going, "But he's so  _ nice _ ! There's no way he could be a Death Eater!" Finally, the boy said, "You're buying total silence from me until the giant oaf burns his hovel down and gets arrested all on his own?"

"Hopefully it won't come to that, but your consideration buys us some more time to convince Hagrid what an idiot he's being," I acknowledged.

"I want in on the enchanting lessons," he said.

I was actually surprised that was all he wanted. He must have been irked that Hermione and Neville were getting an education he couldn't. I decided to see how he was at negotiation. "Longbottom and Granger pay for my time. I can't afford to take on more students for free."

"Then they should pay my fees, since I'm doing a favor for them!" he insisted. I just shrugged, trying to give him the impression that I was just doing a favor for them as well. Finally, he scoffed, "Three galleons a lesson. Final offer!"

I concealed my grin mostly successfully. That was actually substantially more than I was getting from the other two. I'd  _ hoped _ Malfoy didn't have a good idea about how much money meant to those who weren't born wealthy. I held out for a second, trying to pretend I was thinking about haggling, then held out my hand. "Done. Next one's Thursday after dinner in the runes lab."

He hesitated for a second, as if realizing that had gone way too easily, but reached out and shook. "Pleasure, Dresden. See you then." I nodded and he sauntered off to rejoin his thugs, headed toward where the Slytherin dorms must be.

"Oy! Harry! Lurking in alcoves talking to snakes?" Fred asked as he and George wandered down the hall from the other direction, arriving just in time for their detention.

"Just making a deal to get him off your brother and his friends' backs," I told them. I winced as I realized, "You're going to have to put up with him in my enchanting lessons, though."

They shared a look and grinned. George snickered, "Regular private access to a baby snake?"

"Should be fun for the whole family," finished Fred.

"He's got some leverage," I warned them. "Give me a couple weeks until his blackmail's no longer good before you piss him off."

"Say no more!" George grinned as Fred tapped his nose.

"Well, we've got a date with some regulation-thickness cauldrons!" Fred suggested.

"Enjoy the rest of your evening, Harry!" George said as they headed into the classroom for their detention.

I decided I should probably tell Penny and Percy that I'd just thrown a match in the tinderbox that was our enchanting lessons. Hopefully they'd be less flammable than Hagrid's hut.


	13. Stone Faced 13: Stone Theft

##  She’ll Be There When You Hit the Ground

May went by in a bit of a blur. Draco turned out to be surprisingly well behaved in our enchanting sessions, probably due to the lack of one Ron Weasley to set him off. Confronted with Neville and Hermione, his urge was to try to show them up, rather than fight with them. Since they'd had weeks of sessions on him, he had to buckle down, pay attention, and ask a lot of questions.

The issue of the dragon, who Hagrid insisted on calling Norbert, was solved before his hut burned down, but only barely. Once he was convinced that he would soon be unable to keep the dragon secret due to its increasing size, he agreed to try to find more suitable accommodations. We just told McGonagall that Hagrid had found a baby dragon in the forest. When she was dubious that such a thing would be in the forest, I just asked her, "Like the leucrottas?" She probably knew something was going on, but Norbert was quietly shipped off to a dragon preserve where Percy's older brother worked with no one getting in trouble.

While the twins might have liked to prank Malfoy now that his leverage was gone, the rapidly approaching exams put enough stress on everyone that Percy threatened dire consequences if Fred and George messed up the enchanting sessions. Everyone was already feeling like every spare moment should be using for year-end study, and the hour or two a week spent in the runes lab was harder and harder to justify. So Malfoy got off with only a couple minor pranks.

The lower-years had their exams early, to get them out of the way before the OWLs and then the NEWTs. Fortunately, Ron, Neville, and Seamus seemed up to the task of managing Hermione's panic attacks about first-year exams because it was starting to become my full-time job to handle it when Percy and Penny had nearly-nightly freakouts.

Like me, Oliver was content to underachieve and wasn't very stressed about OWLs. As long as he did well enough to stay captain of the quidditch team, he was happy. Instead, he was panicked about Gryffindor's quidditch match against Ravenclaw, which was scheduled for the Saturday before OWLs, just after the lower-years finished their own exams.

We'd cancelled the enchanting lesson the first Thursday in June, just before OWLs. Oliver was furiously drilling the quidditch team with all available daylight, which was all the way to curfew in Scotland this close to the solstice. After Percy had snapped several times at various lower-years who'd finished their exams earlier in the week and wanted to party while he was trying to study in the common room, we'd spent the day hidden away in an empty classroom near the library, just Percy, Penny, and me quizzing each other from test preparation questions.

" _ Expecto patronum _ ," Percy tried again, in a lull between other subjects. A silvery shield appeared in front of his wand. All three of us had gotten to the shield but no further, missing some crucial mindset to achieve the animal imago that was full success at the spell.

"We may need to actually face a dementor in the field to cross the threshold?" Penny suggested, not liking how Percy was exhausting himself further trying to get it. "I know it's extra points on the defense OWL, but being able to do it at all is still a qualifier."

I wasn't thrilled at being stuck either, but as the sun finally started to set I realized how late it was getting. "It's almost curfew," I told them. "Do we want to keep pushing and use your prefect privileges to get in late, or hang it up and start again tomorrow?"

Percy seemed shocked at how late it was. "I have to do patrols!"

"Guess that's the answer," I smiled, tiredly. "Circle back up in the morning." I caught movement out the window and told Percy, "Maybe start by convincing Oliver to finish practice and escort the team back to the dorms? I think he lost track of time as much as you did."

Looking like he really wanted to chew them out, he finally sighed and said, "I guess the entire house would hate me if I came down on the team right before the game?"

"It's always best to balance discipline with morale," Penny grinned, giving him a kiss. "I'm heading back to my dorm. See you boys tomorrow."

I got back to Gryffindor tower pretty quickly as Percy went outside to convince the quidditch team to finish up. When I came in, Mathilda was in the common room, looking anxious, and asked me, "Did the kids ever find you?"

"No?" I said, confused. I realized I'd barely talked to the first-years all week. I wasn't even sure how they thought they'd done on their exams.

"They were freaking out. Dumbledore left for the Ministry. They kept going on about the stone not being protected, and the obstacle course."

I frowned. "You don't think they're just trying to finish the course because he's not here?" I could see Ron and Seamus trying it, but Hermione and Neville would have talked them out of it.

She shook her head. "They were worried, not excited. Said they'd tell McGonagall if they couldn't find any of the upper-years who know about it."

"How long ago was this?"

"At least an hour," she frowned.

I checked the time and saw that it was about ten minutes to curfew. A glance out the window and I could see there was still movement down on the quidditch pitch, so it would be a while before Percy got back with Oliver and the twins. "If we hurry you can go check with McGonagall and I'll make sure they didn't go into the obstacle course?"

"It's a plan," Mathilda admitted, shrugging.

I dropped my bag of books and study notes in the corner, but made sure I had all my foci. Something told me this wasn't going to just be a mission to round up kids who were overreacting.

On the way to the corridor, Filch saw me running and yelled, "Nearly curfew, Dresden!"

"Making sure nobody's in the third-floor corridor," I admitted, no time to come up with an excuse. If they were there, they either had a damned good reason or deserved the detention.

"Bloody Gryffindors!" he snarled, and followed me, Mrs. Norris bounding ahead.

Sure enough, when we got there, the door into Fluffy's room was hanging ajar, and I could hear a boy's voice singing, "...It's alright, it's alright, it's  _ alright _ . She moves... in mysterious ways. It's alright, it's alright, it's  _ alright _ . She moves... in mysterious ways."

"Is that… U2?" Filch asked, scratching his head.

I recognized that the song had played a couple of times in various businesses when I'd been out of the castle over Christmas, and nodded. I couldn't help but smirk and say, "I didn't take you for a muggle pop music fan, Mr. Filch."

"Mrs. Norris likes anything with a synthesizer. I like Rod Stewart and Queen," he shrugged.

I pushed the door the rest of the way open, and saw Seamus in the middle of the room, performing for an audience of one unconscious cerberus. The trapdoor the giant dog guarded was open, and the Irish boy was clearly trying to keep Fluffy asleep.

Spotting us, Seamus quickly rushed out, "McGonagall didn't believe us. Someone was here before us! The other three went in to stop him from getting the stone!" As the dog snorted and started to wake, he went back to his song, "One day you'll look back, and when you see where you were held by this love while you could stand there, you could move on this moment, follow this feeling…"

As the giant dog calmed back into sleep and Mrs. Norris looked intensely offended at the huge canine even existing, Filch growled, "Albus might let me break out the thumb screws for this lot!"

"Have to save them from dying down there to give them detention," I shrugged. "You want to come with?"

"I'm… er…" he started. Even though the challenges didn't really require much magic to get past, the old squib had enough mobility issues that he probably wouldn't be an advantage.

"Guard the room, let McGonagall know what's going on, and relieve Seamus when he runs out of U2 songs he knows?" I suggested. He nodded and I said, "Hopefully, I'll be back soon with some first-years earning a long detention." With that, I leapt through the trap door.

##  Battlechess

I grabbed my staff with my legs like a broom as I fell, yelling, " _ Arresto momentum! _ " While the devil's snare was probably still at the bottom, I didn't want to risk that the kids had burned it up to get out. As my slowing spell turned the long fall into an easy drift, I wondered just how Dumbledore had set this much of the castle aside for the project. If Fluffy was on the ground floor it would make sense that I was in a dungeon, but from the third floor, it must have been a construction of walling-off existing rooms and opening new passages on the second and first floors. Or was the whole thing in an expanded wizard space?

After several more seconds than it would have taken if I'd fallen at full speed, I touched down into the vines of the giant plant that lurked in the darkness beneath the trap door. I only smelled a hint of recent smoke, which probably meant Hermione had handled the plant. I expected the whole thing would have been destroyed if Seamus had come along. I put a hand to my amulet and incanted " _ Lumos solem! _ " The obscure variation of the charm provided a warm glow much closer to sunlight, causing the tendrils of the plant that had already tried to bind me to shy away.

Wandering into the next room, the tinkle of the swarm of flying keys indicated that the second obstacle was still operating. In the light of my amulet, the flickers of metal were actually quite pretty. But the obstacle had been passed so frequently that the poor, abused key that opened the door flitted about on nearly-broken wings, unable to fly as fast or as high as the rest. I waited for my moment and just jumped, snagging the key out of the air as it tried to fly past. I assumed the impish Professor Flitwick had set this up, and never imagined anyone except maybe Hagrid would be able to reach ten feet in the air without the provided brooms.

The next room was the furthest I'd seen. If the professors checked at all, they must have known that students were coming down here: to either side of the immense chess board, piles of stone marked the previously-shattered chess pieces from the dozen or more games Gryffindors had started here. It had already reset, four rows of opposing, gargantuan figures magically reformed for a new game. Even the pawns stood taller than me, and the king and queen were gigantic.

I didn't need my amulet in the well-lit room, and let the light fade. Amid the rubble to the right side of the board, Ron Weasley's body was sprawled, either unconscious or dead. I skirted the edge of the board and leaned over the redhead, feeling for a pulse. He was alive, and the knot on his head made me expect that he'd taken a blow from one of the animated statues that were the chess pieces.

Not knowing how far ahead the others were, I didn't have time to try my limited healing skills on the boy. "Hope this works.  _ Rennervate! _ " I wasn't  _ totally _ sure that the reviving spell was supposed to be used on a concussed target, but Ron started to struggle. Worried he wouldn't be able to  _ stay  _ conscious with the head wound, I fished out a small vial of potion from the back of my utility belt, checked it, and handed it to him, "Drink this."

"Ugh, what was that," Ron frowned after taking a single swallow to drink the green potion.

"Girding potion," I told him. "Don't know if boosting your endurance will help much, but it's the best I can do. What happened?"

"We played across the board," he explained. "I had to sacrifice myself to get Neville and Hermione through."

"What pieces did you replace?" I asked, curious.

"Knight, bishop, and castle," he said.

"Not the king or the queen?"

He thought for a moment and admitted, chagrined, "That would have been safer, wouldn't it?"

I just shook my head, helping him stand and started to say, "If you're feeling stable enough, take one of the brooms in the key room to fly back–"

"Harry!" yelled Hermione, running in from whatever was in the next room. Neville was right behind her, pieces of him flickering in and out as Ron's invisibility cloak flapped in the wind of his passage. "It's Quirrell! He was trying to get the stone!"

"He's right behind us, Harry!" Neville said, as they got closer. As soon as he was close enough to feel confident, he gave an underhand toss and a small, irregular red stone that glistened like glass in the torchlight flew through the air at me. I managed to catch it and shove it into a pouch in my belt. "Better you to protect it than me," he shrugged.

I heard running steps coming from the room they'd just exited, and hissed, "All of you under the cloak and sneak out of here!" They seemed to be complying, and I moved forward along the right hand side of the board until the white pieces on the far side turned, ready to stop me getting further. They'd hopefully serve as obstacles against the attacking defense professor.

Disheveled and winded from the run, a piece of turban unraveling and trailing behind him, the man in question raced out of the far hallway and into the middle of the chessboard before he saw me, my stunner speeding toward his flank. " _ Protego! _ " he shouted, just in time, flicking his wand into a shield to intercept my attack. "Dresden!" he shouted, "I should have known."

"No stutter, P-P-Professor?" I mocked, crouching slightly into a dueling stance, my left arm and shield bracelet forward while I held my staff slightly back. I drifted slowly back toward the black pieces so cover would be available, hoping the kids were clearing out.

"The time for subterfuge is over," he grinned. " _ Colloportus! _ " he suddenly shouted, gesturing at the door back into the room with the keys. "If the children are hiding, now they're trapped."

"And if they're already gone?" I tried to ask nonchalantly, hoping they were but realizing I hadn't heard the door open and close.

He shrugged, "Then it's just the three of us." With his free hand, he unwound the turban, trying to keep me covered with his wand as I reached the relative safety of the line of black pawns. "If they gave you the stone, I advise handing it over. You'll like that better than the alternative."

"Stone? Like this?  _ Depulso! _ " I stepped back and swung my staff like a golf club, banishing a collection of chess piece rubble at the defense professor.

I was curious whether he knew how to make shields that could stop physical objects, but instead he shrieked and dodged, getting clipped by several pieces of small stone at the edge of my poorly directed attack. "You've made your choice, impudent boy! Master, should I kill him?"

"No!" ordered a wheezing voice that became clearer as he finished removing the turban from his prematurely bald head. "Until we have the ssstone, he is ssstill of use to me."

"So be it,  _ crucio! _ " Quirrell flicked his wand at me, clearly hoping I  _ hadn't  _ been paying attention in class. I dodged behind a pawn, and the Unforgivable hit it, cracks appearing in the conjured stone.

"Points for Gryffindor for not trying to shield?" I asked, moving further behind the rook as the professor tried to circle and get a better vantage point to me. "I mean, if you're going to kill me, might as well have my house remember me fondly for winning them some points before I go." I wondered whether Mathilda had actually managed to get help from the assistant headmistress.

"He'sss ssstalling," complained the high-pitched voice from the back of Quirrell's head. "End thisss quickly."

"I'm trying, master," Quirrell argued with the voice. I couldn't see it clearly since I was trying to keep the professor from having a clear line of fire to me, but it seemed like a gray tumor on his head was doing the talking.

"You have wizard cancer there, professor?" I snarked. "Madam Pomfrey could probably treat that." I made a guess, "Unless you've been trying to treat it yourself with unicorn blood."

"How dare you call the Dark Lord a cancer!?" he insisted. "When he comes back into his power, I will be his favored servant. Not that fool Du Morne, nor any of the others.  _ Oppugno! _ "

He hit the base of the rook with the object-attracting jinx and I was clipped by several stones hurtling at the chess piece before I leapt out of the way. Fortunately, I thought to shield as I leapt, because several fast curses came at me as I danced between pieces, moving behind the bishop as he shifted his own position on the board. It seemed, at least, like he couldn't manage an Unforgivable every volley. I wondered how energy-efficient those were, and how hard it would be to exhaust the professor who'd been sick for months with what I guessed was possession.

It finally clicked for me and I shouted over the sound of clattering stones, "At least Justin was smart enough to try to get someone else possessed. An  _ asshole _ , but smarter than you."

"You think this was my first plan?" Quirrell railed, started to get annoyed with me. Good. Angry enemies were sloppy enemies. That's the entire reason I ran my mouth so much, and you can't prove otherwise. " _ You _ were meant to be the vessel, Dresden. I would have had unlimited time to acquire the stone while we determined if Du Morne's ritual would even still require it. But you rejected the gift of the master's presence!" He caught sight of me and yelled, " _ Crucio! _ " again, missing as I ducked back behind the bishop."

I caught motion to my left as that side's rook walked off the board. Trying to cover for whatever the kids were doing, I kept running my mouth. "I don't know, man. Seems like both of you could have had a better time by just letting Dark Lord Wizard Cancer rot in whatever hole he was hiding in. Maybe stop blaming me because you're a dumbass?"

" _ Reducto! Reducto! Reducto! _ " the mocked professor shouted, blowing shards of giant chess piece into shrapnel around me. I hunkered down beneath a shield and only took a few of the hits. I was getting a little bruised and scratched, but was still feeling alright. Where the hell was my backup? A white pawn on the far side moved forward, its walking hidden by the sounds of smashing rock.

"Pawn to A5!" I heard Ron shout from the seemingly-empty corner square. The black pawn immediately in front of Quirrell stomped forward, forcing him to dodge out of the way, and I nearly landed a stunner on the hastily-shielding professor as the white side's queen started moving. "Knight to A6!" the invisible chess prodigy shouted, moving the pieces to inconvenience Quirrel as the entire side started to move so the knight, pieces blasted out of it, could walk over behind the pawn.

"Ignore the distractions!" the professor's passenger hissed. "The children must be in the other corner!"

A voice that was probably Hermione made a small, "Eep!"

##  A Little Soul Magic

Trying to distract from the kids, I yelled after Quirrell, "This isn't the first time you've gone after those kids, is it? Why send the troll after Hermione?  _ Stupefy! _ " I leaned around the bishop and fired a stunner.

" _ Protego! _ I heard there was a mudblood crying alone in a bathroom. If she'd died, it would have given me much more time in here.  _ Reducto! _ " The professor was ambling toward the left side of the board, keeping an eye on the white queen that had moved out in response to a black pawn Ron had tried to put in his way from the middle of the board.

"I lost that jumper in your class!" shrieked Hermione, still invisible in the corner. " _ Incendio! _ " Her shout was followed up by a pair of knockback jinxes from Ron and Neville.

"Dodge, fool!  _ Expelliarmus! _ " hissed the cursed wizard living on the back of Quirrell's head. He must have seen the wands poke out of the cloak, and they went flying. Fortunately, the professor diving to avoid the barrage of spells meant he couldn't snag the foci from the air.

" _ Accio Wands! _ " I yelled, summoning the sticks to my hand from where I could see them flying above the chess board. While Quirrell was off balance, I moved left between pieces, trying to get a better view, and he smashed a few more pieces with object-shattering curses without getting close.

While he was focused on me, Ron took another moment for a chess move, "Bishop to A3!" The piece launched itself diagonally all the way across the board and through the square Quirrell had been stopped short at by the previous pawn.

"I tire of thisss," hissed Voldemort as the professor once again stumbled out of the way. "I ssshall end it!"

"No, master, you are not strong enough," Quirrell whined, still trying to keep me covered with his wand and an eye on the chess pieces.

"I have ssstrength enough… for thisss.  _ FINITE INCANTANTEM! _ " With that shouted spell, a burst of magic emerged from the conjoined wizard and, as it washed over the chess pieces, they began to slowly collapse into rubble. Fortunately, my own enchanting seemed to be sturdier than the transfigured pieces, so my utility belt didn't disgorge its contents. I  _ was  _ about to be without cover.

" _ Stupefy! Ventus! _ " I shouted while swinging my staff end to end at the professor, who seemed briefly staggered by the magic expenditure.

Voldemort hissed, " _ Protego! _ " to catch the stunner, somehow forming a shield between me and the professor, but the wind spell still shoved Quirrell off balance. "End thisss, you fool. The children are helplessss and he lacksss protection!"

I realized he was right. The chess pieces had quickly melted into flowing sand. I had nothing of substance in between us, and no more stones to use as weapons or shields. Faster than I'd give him credit for from the knee he'd taken, Quirrell snapped off, "Yes master.  _ Imperio! _ "

While I nearly dodged it, the Unforgivable was fired low and caught me in the leg. That's all it took. Suddenly my head felt wrapped in dark wool. Reasoning centers shutting down, all I could see was Quirrell, and all I could feel was a stifling numbness.

"Now, Dresden," spoke the only voice that meant anything to me. "Give me the philosopher's stone."

A new light appeared in the darkness, a trail of bright thought that reminded me that I'd placed it in one of my belt pouches. I glanced down, and could see my hand and the right slot in the belt. I slowly reached in, and could feel the rock in question in a bed of lead shot. Why was I so hesitant to produce it?

"Dresden! The stone!" insisted the professor, his full attention on me, no time for disarmed first-years even if they were invisible.

A stray thought passed almost unheeded through my mind about how much I hated the imperius. My godmother had been insistent that I know what it and the cruciatus was like. She probably would have tried the killing curse on me as well, if it was something you could build a resistance to. I thought she'd actually been quite pleased how well I did resisting it. I was too emotional to ever be good at occlumency, but I was certainly pig-headed enough to resist mind control.

"Can you not dominate a sssixteen-year-old?" yelled a voice on the edge of my consciousness.

It was still a near thing. I felt the wool tighten as Quirrell fought to control me. My hand dug into the pouch and it was all I could do to fight withdrawing the stone. And then, from somewhere a million miles away to my left I heard a girl's voice yell, " _ Wingardium leviosa! _ "

The utter surprise of the now-floating professor allowed me to tear through the rest of the spell. Thinking the kids disarmed, neither of the dark wizards sharing one body had noticed Hermione produce the quill focus I'd made her for Christmas and levitate him by his robes. As my faculties returned, I realized he'd easily counter the spell in a moment, but I couldn't resist the urge to shout, "Pull!" When my hand came out of the pouch, it was full of lead shot, not a magic stone. I tossed them in Quirrell's direction then baseball-swung my staff while shouting, " _ Depulso! _ "

No way to dodge while floating, Quirrell shrieked a hasty, " _ Protego! _ " but his shield was nowhere near as good against physical objects as mine was. While not as fast as the shotgun blast they resembled, the lead balls still smacked loudly into various parts of his body, drawing shrieks of pain.

" _ Stupefy! _ " I said, throwing one last stunner past the disintegrating shield. Quirrell slumped, unconscious, in the air, and then dropped slowly to the ground as Hermione released the spell.

"That was bloody brilliant!" exclaimed Ron, pulling the cloak off of the three kids, who looked unharmed. "Wait until my family hears I nearly ran You-Know-Who over with a chess set!"

"And Hermione picked him up by his underwear," smirked Neville. "I guess Harry helped a little, too," he deadpanned.

"Is it over?" Hermione asked, quill still held defensively as I walked over to give them their wands back.

"It'sss never over!" hissed Voldemort from Quirrell's head, apparently unaffected by the stunner. The body began to twitch, and what looked like smoke began to rip itself free from the slumped form. "I ssshall sssimply avail myself of another host."

In moments, the same wraith that had come after me nearly a year before hovered above the wreckage of Quirrell's body, looking us over as if deciding who to claim.

My caveman brain was screaming at me to kill it with fire. I knew fiendfyre had driven it off before. But the fire had claimed much more, and I couldn't risk the kids getting burned.

I barely realized that I'd moved to interpose myself between the trio of first-years and the hovering wraith. Was I reflexively sacrificing myself so they'd never know the touch of the creature? I wasn't sure I'd do that for just anyone: the very idea of being possessed by Voldemort terrified me. But  _ these _ kids were mine to protect.

I'd planned to just do my time at Hogwarts and not make any more connections, because I was afraid to trust and afraid of being betrayed. Somehow, I'd failed so utterly at doing so that I now had more friends than I'd had in my life. Months of time spent in classes with them all, but at the forefront of my mind was a simple heartfelt statement from a father that couldn't protect his own child. "...thanks for looking out for our daughter. You didn't have to, and nobody else was. It means the world to her. And us." I realized, though I may never be free of the traumas of my past, I could be… I  _ was _ happy. These kids were  _ mine  _ to protect.

" _ Expecto patronum! _ "

Anticipating, at best, a silver shield to defend us from the wraith that drifted ever closer, I was surprised when my mother's necklace lit like the sun and disgorged an immense silvery beast almost as large as me. The lion-like, massive dog crouched before us, facing the wraith and shaking with rage. Voldemort paused, hovering only ten feet away, then started to float forward again.

My patronus  _ barked _ . He didn't make a sound, exactly, but he clearly made the gesture and a blast of silver light washed from his mouth and rolled over the wraith. Voldemort wailed and was carried away by the roiling blast beyond the walls of the chess room. Turning around with a doggy smirk at a job well done, the patronus dissolved back into a cloud of light that quickly faded.

_ Then _ , with the same timing as they had with the troll, the reinforcements finally showed up.


	14. Stone Faced 14: Year Book

## Answers and Questions

It was extremely early Friday morning when Dumbledore came to check up on us in the hospital wing. Neville and Hermione were mostly there for observation and a few bumps and bruises they'd gotten in the obstacle course. Ron, of course, had a concussion from getting the wrong end of a giant magical chess piece. I had a number of scrapes and contusions, mostly owing to shrapnel from the same chess pieces. But Pomfrey thought we'd by out in plenty of time for the Quidditch match on Saturday.

Mathilda and Seamus had apparently been sent back to the tower before McGonagall showed up a few minutes too late to assist, and I fully expected to be inundated with questions as soon as visiting hours began. From the slump of his shoulders, Dumbledore looked like he'd had a trying evening of his own, and I heard him mutter something about the seventh month dying as he looked at the four of us in our hospital beds. Noticing me watching him, he tried to stand a little straighter and resume his grandfatherly persona.

The kids woke as they realized he was here, and I only half paid attention as he gave them congratulations for their role in Voldemort's defeat. When he mentioned the stone would be destroyed, because it was far too dangerous, I barely managed to contain my scoff. Dumbledore raised an eyebrow, and I nodded to the other side of the hospital wing, away from the kids.

"If you'll excuse me and Mr. Dresden," the old man told them, "You need your rest and we have a few more things to talk about." I got out of bed and followed him out of earshot of the precocious kids. "I trust you still have the stone, Mr. Dresden."

"I have _something_ ," I told him, then handed him the glassy, red stone Neville had thrown me. It fell into his palm with a few pieces of dull, gray lead shot from the pouch I'd put it in. "Guess I'm not going to be able to pay for my next year's supplies with a pouch of gold."

"And if I told you that the process of using the stone was more complicated than simply touching it to the metals in question?"

"I'd still expect that you were smart enough to use a convincing fake rather than have any risk of Voldemort getting the real thing," I told him. "Though, I guess you didn't think about what would happen if you had to leave the castle for more than an hour."

"Yes, well," he admitted, polishing his glasses in embarrassment, "I had not quite anticipated careful plans after the early attempt with the troll. Quirinus was able to slip a subtle confundus charm onto Minerva so she'd ignore the alarms I'd passed to her when I left, as well as any other evidence of risk to the stone. And I was called to the Ministry on another ruse. An employee there attacked me, but managed to escape. We think he was an undercover Death Eater trying to enact a backup plan, and I've spent hours engaged in that business.

"I really _am_ grateful that you went to save the children, Harry. While, as you note, the stone was never in actual danger, he could have severely injured them if he discovered the ruse. Or simply out of spite."

"That could have been me, instead of Quirrell," I frowned.

Dumbledore nodded. "I don't know what ritual Du Morne was planning to use. It could have resulted in a much more complete possession. He may not have even needed the stone. Possessing poor Quirinus was likely a plan of desperation when he could not have you and did not acquire the stone from Gringotts that night."

I realized what he was trying to say, and noted, "Justin, Quirrell, the guy at the Ministry… he has a bunch of wizards trying to help him come back."

"I'm afraid so. The small bright spot, my boy, is that they all seem to be pursuing different plots to bring their master back. The Death Eaters were always fractious and hard to bend toward a single goal. Now that their master has once again been dispersed, hopefully they will be even less organized."

"Dispersed, but not gone. For some reason, he can keep coming back. And he's tried to possess me four times now." I frowned and rubbed at my left shoulder.

"Are you quite alright, Harry?"

"It's started itching again, since I came face to face with him," I admitted, peeling back the corner of my hospital robe to show the white finger marks on my shoulder from where the wraith of Voldemort had touched me nearly ten months earlier. They didn't look worse than they had all year. "Probably psychosomatic."

"I… hadn't realized he'd _marked_ you," the old wizard gave me an extremely strange look.

I shrugged, pulling the robe back closed. "Better me than the kids."

"Indeed," he cast a thoughtful glance in their direction, then switched back into his helpful grandfather tone. "Well, I hope you'll keep the secret about the stone. It can only help for him to believe that it was destroyed. The Flamels have agreed to lay low until this plays out, even should it take quite some time. They have plenty of it, after all."

"Hopefully it won't take that long. After OWLs, we need to catch you up on the anti-wraith spells. I think we've made some progress," I explained.

"I very much look forward to hearing about it. Oh! I've also seen to your housing situation for the summer. An alumnus of the school who I think you'll get along with has a spare room and could use the company. Minerva will provide you the details," he insisted as I was about to ask for those details. "For now, I must see that nothing else has gone awry in my absence."

Not long after I went back to my bed, visiting hours started and the Gryffindors (and one Ravenclaw) descended as a mass to check on the four of us. I let the kids tell the story, though it was clear that Seamus had already caught everyone up to his part and my entrance.

"I _would_ have been right behind you. McGonagall took forever to believe me! Then she insisted I take Seamus back to the tower," Mathilda apologized to me. "I think she only really started to listen when she realized you had already gone down there."

"She was confounded," I explained. "Wonder if you managed to get through to her, or it just broke during the fight. Either way, it's probably better," I tried to soothe her without being insulting. "He didn't take the kids seriously. If there were multiple people he thought were a threat, he might have worked harder to seriously injure or kill someone."

That seemed to mollify the over-excitable witch, and soon it was Percy, Penny, and Oliver apologizing that they hadn't been around. They'd apparently finally gotten back to the tower just as Mathilda was coming back with Seamus, and been stopped by Filch after the assistant headmistress had already passed on word it was over.

"So you formed a full patronus?" asked Percy, seeming impressed.

I demurred, since the two of them were still having trouble with the spell. "Barely. It's pretty much just a little mouse."

## OWLing Home

The final quidditch match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had worked out to be for the championship. It had something to do with point totals, and I retained what Oliver was telling me just long enough to point out that made the 150 point bonus for the snitch even more unfair. Then I promptly forgot everything about the calculation as a waste of my mental space for OWLs.

Gryffindor barely squeaked out a win in the match by somehow getting way ahead on goals, though Katie lost the snitch to Cho, the Scottish witch that we'd been studying with. But Ravenclaw was still far enough ahead on points for the year to win the quidditch cup. Both sides seemed grudgingly happy about it, which worked out for Percy and Penny (even though neither cared much about quidditch).

Our young seeker, Katie Bell, seemed pretty dejected at the party, since she'd missed the snitch every game she'd played, and Gryffindor had only done as well as we had due to the rest of the team. I tactfully did _not_ point out to her that the seeker position was ridiculous, and the team _should_ do better based on those actually playing.

With that excitement out of the way, the last two weeks of the year were devoted to OWLs. After the months of preparation, they were honestly kind of underwhelming. Even Percy and Penny seemed to calm down after the first few days of tests. We wouldn't get the results until later in the summer, but I felt pretty good about all the subjects I cared about. I even felt okay about history and astronomy due to all the study. A corporeal patronus did, indeed, seem to count for extra credit on the defense exam, and I was pleased I could still manifest mine outside of a life or death battle with a haunted wizard.

I wasn't entirely sure what everyone who wasn't taking OWLs or NEWTs did during the last few weeks of the semester, since they'd gotten their exams out early. I even had a week after OWLs to decompress, as the Ministry administered NEWTs. Though there was probably a more efficient way to schedule things, it _was_ nice to have some time in the reasonably sunny weather outside with friends who were no longer obsessed with exams. It was nice to _have_ friends.

In a blink, the lazy first week of summer was over and it was time for the leaving feast. The hall was covered in blue and bronze, since the win at quidditch had boosted Ravenclaw far enough ahead of Gryffindor and Slytherin in points that they'd won the house cup. Before the feast started, Dumbledore stood up and explained the point totals, and looked like he was about to say something else as McGonagall hissed at him, "Albus, they've worked very hard for this. It would be _cruel_ to steal it away." The other teachers probably heard, but I doubted the other students did.

"But Harry's–" he whispered to argue.

"–nearly an adult and doesn't need a show in front of the school for having done a good thing," she cut him off, glancing at me as if realizing I heard them.

Looking a little crestfallen, the headmaster nodded to his assistant and said to the great hall, "Congratulations, Ravenclaw. Everyone tuck in."

After that, it was just a train ride back to London. The arrangement was surprisingly similar to what it had been in September, though we'd taken on enough new friends to fill three carriage rooms. The first-years took up one of their own and Percy and Penny sat with me when they weren't on patrol (along with Oliver, his girlfriend Alexis when _she_ wasn't on patrol, and the twins). And the girls of the quidditch team plus Mathilda, Patricia, and Lee had grabbed a room of their own close enough to pop in frequently but deliberately separate in case Oliver tried to make them have a long conversation about the next year's quidditch strategy.

It was a strange sensation. The last time I'd been on the train I'd been anxious about whether it was a big mistake, relieved to have anyone to sit with and not take the long ride alone. After ten months, I was almost totally comfortable, and fully engaged in the camaraderie. I still didn't know what the summer would bring.

I had a mysterious landlord that I'd barely learned anything about from McGonagall. I still wasn't out from under the Doom of Damocles and Dawlish could show up to harass me at any moment. My godmother was up to _something_. The wraith of the most feared dark wizard in the last fifty years was on the loose and seemed particularly interested in me. And I still had no long-term plans.

But for one train ride, I was just a sixteen-year-old kid on a cross-country trip with my friends, and that was enough. The threatening future could wait just a few more hours.

**End of Year 1**

## Appendix 1: What is Magic?

This is the summary of how magic works as Justin taught it to me and I explained it to the kids who came to my enchanting tutorials. Hogwarts doesn't explain most of this unless you take arithmancy, and even then, some of the theory is lost in the practice.

Magic is, quite simply, imposing your wishes on reality. Those with access to the gift can want something impossible to happen badly enough that it happens. When a wizard is young, this "accidental magic" is the only way he knows to enact his gift. When a wizard is old and powerful, he can likewise, merely think magic into being. In the middle, wizards are taught complicated practices to organize this into spells that they'll eventually try to abandon. The difference between the untrained child and the ancient master is control over these wishes. Accidental magic doesn't do exactly what you expect to happen when you want it, but a master can create magic, when needed, every single time.

The first question you need to ask to understand how the process of magical training works is: why are most spells in Latin?

The reason is because it keeps the magic separated from your speech. If magic spells were in English (or whatever modern language you speak), you'd risk accidentally casting them in normal conversation. The pathways of your brain that control the instinct to create the magic get trained by the wording of the spell. Hogwarts professors probably don't work hard enough to get kids out of the habit of referring to spells by their incantation rather than their English name. One day, some kid is going to talk about the fire-making charm as "incendio" and accidentally set a friend on fire.

As I understand it, every culture with magic similarly uses a language that's not frequently used for conversation as their language of incantations. The Romans used ancient Greek, Aramaic, or Etruscan. Non-Western wizards use outdated forms of their own local languages. I'm still investigating Professor McGonagall's assertion that Hogwarts classes used to be taught in Latin while still using Latin incantations.

Of course, you can't just say the Latin word for something and consider that a spell. The use of a meaningful word in Latin is useful, but that's because even if you don't really speak it, it does have a meaning that you can latch onto. "Incendio" is a word that more or less means "I set on fire." You could probably make the magic work with a different series of sounds, but it would be harder to remember.

The most important thing is that "incendio" is four syllables, and arithmantically adds up to a 5-4-4-6 structure ( _i_ is the 9th letter plus _n_ is the 14th, which adds up to 23 which combines down to 5). There's no way I could effectively summarize the exact practicals of how that number adding works or why 5-4-4-6 is a similar numerical array to related spells. You're either just going to have to take my word for it or commit to five years of arithmancy class. Essentially, _any_ word that was close enough to a 5-4-4-6 cadence could be used as the incantation for the fire-making spell. Why are some incantations really bad Latin? Because the more correct Latin didn't fit the arithmancy.

There's a ton of math in figuring out an incantation, and that's just half of a spell. The other half comes in using your focus.

At the simplest level, the foci that I use for my magic (staff, blasting rod, etc.) are limited to particular types of spell. Spells that create or change motion are fundamentally similar in their arithmancy, so I was able to fit a bunch of them into my staff, and I have to differentiate between them by the different incantations. Also, turning the staff into different types of gestures improves the spell (but I can get a weaker version by just holding it and yelling). I've embedded a _spell matrix_ into the staff, which is a three-dimensional (some say a four-dimensional) shape that also defines its parameters. The arithmancy of the incantation hooks into the arithmancy of the matrix to basically create a momentary bubble of possibility for the wizard's thoughts to fill with the magic.

It's all extremely technical, which is why any Hogwarts student that skips arithmancy and ancient runes has pretty much no idea how it works. They're training engineers, not scientists. Most wizards never need to know how their tools work.

A wand is the most complicated piece of technology that wizards have come up with. If my staff is an abacus, a wand is a mainframe computer. Both can help you add numbers, but the computer can do so much more while being so much harder to understand. In a tiny, concealable form factor, wandmakers create a focus that can allow you to perform any spell, theoretically up to the maximum power possible.

The first drawback is the finesse issue. For whatever reason, I and a lot of other wizards have a really hard time using wands. It's some combination of conceptual and down to sheer manual dexterity (I have really long arms and that messes up the precise spell gestures). There are probably a ton of really great wizards who leave wand-focused schools thinking they're bad at it, because they just can't figure out the only technology those schools teach.

The second drawback is compatibility. While every focus has some degree of resonance with the aura of its user, wands are 100% locked into it. I picked the materials for my staff because they worked for me, but it's still extremely effective in any wizard's hands. A wand that's a poor match, however, may barely work at all.

It comes down to the secret technology of how they fit all those spell matrices into one focus. My suspicion is that the wand bonds to the wizard to basically turn his whole body into a completion of the matrix. A poorly-matched wand means all your matrices are malformed before you even start casting.

The third drawback is the gestures. Most of the matrix for a spell is in my staff so I can get away with just pointing. But a wand has to fit every possible spell in, which means it can only carry the most common arithmantic elements of all spells, and algorithms for transforming wand motion into the rest of the spell matrix. Why do you have to swish-and-flick to levitate something with a wand when I just have to gesture with my staff? That precise motion is finishing the matrix for the spell, which I've already fully encoded into my staff. Wand users have to get very good at training their muscle memory.

Ultimately, advanced users tend to start getting into magic without words or foci. Without the words, you have to create the spell in your head using no mnemonic aid triggering your brain. Without the focus, you have to fully visualize the matrix. Without either, you're basically relying on your imagination to fully generate an extremely complex mental construct with no aids other than your own brainpower. You quickly find that using words and tools to train your unconscious mind to do the heavy lifting makes a big difference.

And, when it comes down to it, all of this _is_ just training your brain. Arithmantic correspondences and spell matrixes aren't _real_. Non-Western traditions use completely different methods of structuring their magic. Western wizards use the structures they do because they've been codified and imbued with meaning, so it's something your brain can latch onto. I've heard some people suggest that part of it is also a "universal unconscious" thing: if enough people with the power to make their wishes reality think that the letter A is equal to 1, then that becomes true. I'll leave that up to the Department of Mysteries to weigh in on. All I know is that every bit of it is a mental construct.

You are a wizard. Your thoughts and desires can make impossible things happen. Every bit of magical praxis you've been taught is simply about making it easier to do what you want and harder to have accidents. It all comes down to: if you wish hard enough, you can change the world. Magic is just a set of tools to help you make the best wishes you can.

## Appendix 2: The Wizarding World

Imagine that soccer is the best-kept secret in the world. Some children display an inexplicable facility kicking balls, and then, by their 11th birthday, they're tracked down and informed by FIFA that they are soccer players. They can either train in the sport, or forget that it even exists. FIFA runs elite training schools for those truly serious about it, but it's also possible to go to smaller camps, or simply apprentice to an adult soccer player. When you become an adult yourself, you may do whatever you want with your life, but, when you're playing soccer, you're beholden to FIFA's rules. Rules made by administrators in the organization, who almost entirely came from the elite schools. Most soccer players have day jobs, and use their athletic prowess to give them a bit of a leg up in life. The truly professional players and administrators exist in their own high-stakes world.

Okay, sue me, it's a tortured metaphor because the world only has one thing that's like magic, and that's magic.

The best estimates I can find suggest there are 60 thousand magically talented folks in Britain, or around one for every 1,000 muggles. This isn't a hard rule or anything, just the current demographics. Before modern medicine, the ratio was probably significantly higher for wizards, who've long had the magical health care necessary to live well into their second century. It probably also helps to be able to use magic to get access to food and shelter and to avoid having to die in international wars. Though wizards often had violent, secret wars of their own.

Hogwarts takes 40 students a year. Fewer than one in ten British wizards attended the school. But if you look at Ministry bureaucrats, aurors, healers at St. Mungos, and the wealthiest individuals, it seems like everyone you meet has been there. And that's _after_ you realize the muggleborns that make up a small but meaningful fraction of Hogwarts students aren't represented. What I'm saying is that the core of British wizarding society is an old-wizard's club far worse than even America's obsession with an ivy-league education. Virtually every position of power is held in the vice grip of a conspiracy of purebloods who went to Hogwarts.

What about the other fifty-something-thousand magical individuals in the country? If you work in a big enough muggle company, you probably have at least one in your office. Does it seem like Renaissance festival folks take it way too seriously? They're over-represented there. Carnies, artists, musicians, psychics, and other jobs where you can get away with being eccentric also feature far more magicals than one in a thousand.

Most of them aren't very well-trained. For the vast majority, the Ministry's satisfied if you can do enough basic spells to convince them you're not going to do accidental magic in an emotional moment, and that you understand the world of consequences they'll bring down on you if you break the Statute of Secrecy.

But keep in mind that well-trained is relative. Hogwarts teaches students to levitate things, start fires, make precise cuts and repairs, unlock doors, and transfigure inanimate objects in their first year. Even figuring out a handful of minor spells is a huge advantage in the muggle world. The honest go into crafting or service professions where they can do way more work than a muggle can (because muggle tools have to follow the laws of physics). The _dishonest_ can easily become master criminals. And the Ministry doesn't pay too much attention to crime against muggles if it wasn't obviously caused by magic.

Ironically, the wizards that are struggling the most financially are often the purebloods raised so completely in the Hogwarts pipeline that they can't figure out how to make a go of it in the muggle world, but who are also near the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to cushy Ministry jobs. I love the Weasleys to death, but they _baffle_ me.

The other irony of wizarding life is, the more powerful your magic, the harder it is to _truly_ fit into the muggle world. Magic violates all the laws of science, and that also means that strongly magical objects, areas, and individuals cause problems with technology. Physics and chemistry develop inconsistencies in a strong magical field.

At Hogwarts and other sites of power, this field is so strong that even synthetic materials break down. Part of the reason they've stuck with quills is that plastic pens slowly melt into goo (though that's no excuse to not at least use fountain pens). The process is slow enough that the muggle kids outgrowing their tennis shoes and elastic underwear probably don't notice how much they start to sag, but don't bring your beloved polyester-blend t-shirts and expect them to be more than rags in a year or two.

I've also heard that, near the strongest fields, items that rely on precision machining start to have problems. Magic makes materials flex very slightly on a molecular level, and the more precise your machine, even if it doesn't use electricity, the more likely it is to have problems. For example, modern guns don't work consistently at Hogwarts, because the barrels and mechanisms are so precise that any flex at all can cause them to jam. Wizards, who still exist in a primarily hand-made materials economy, never even notice.

Electricity is a bigger problem. Changes to chemistry are slow, but changes to physics are fast. Casting a spell causes havoc in nearby sensitive electronics, and powerful enough wizards can interfere with delicate electronics simply by standing near them. Most of my pop culture knowledge of films comes from sitting safely in a theater where the projection equipment is far away, because I've killed every TV I've ever tried to watch for longer than an hour or two. That's another reason for magicals to go into non-office jobs, particularly as they become more reliant on technology: even a weak wizard will quickly kill any computer by sitting at a desk right in front of it for eight hours a day.

What you're left with is a three-layered society.

In the center is a strange core of pureblood-centric elites who almost entirely eschew muggle society for various reasons, not least of which is that their eccentricities and effect on technology make them inherently dangerous to the Statue of Secrecy. They "govern" the other layers insofar as they have a chokehold on power and are generally better educated in magic, so can win in a conflict even against superior numbers.

The next layer are strong but were either not trained to the same level or were, but were muggleborns who couldn't fit into the core society. They are smeared in a gradient between non-elite jobs in wizarding society and jobs in muggle society where one can avoid technology and get away with being unusual.

Finally, the weakest and worst-trained almost entirely live in the muggle world, indistinguishable from muggles with an obscure hobby or religion. With even a few magical talents, they tend to be successful beyond what their station in life would otherwise suggest, and mostly just ignore the magical government until they can't avoid it.

Honestly, when there's not a dark wizard throwing around spells that only the best-trained have any hope of protecting themselves against, the current standard of living in muggle society means that the people that purebloods most look down on probably have it way better than those with superior magic.


	15. Dark Room 1: Work Days

## Sign of the Times

London has a lot going for it as a city, not least of which is cool old shops you can just get lost in. I had found a comfortable corner in the upstairs of Hatchards, a book store that nearly predated the United States. You just didn't get stuff like that back in Chicago. Of course, I wasn't the only one that appreciated the ambience. The place was probably packed with tourists _every_ day of summer, but even more so because of the book signing going on.

The corner I'd chosen was partially out of defense from the crowd of chattering pre-teens and their parents that had mobbed the table where the wizard I was staying with for the summer was set up, wearing out his hand giving autographs to children. With my height, I could easily keep an eye on him and the stairs. I usually had at least a head of clearance in _any_ crowd, but with a bunch of kids it was easy.

It also meant I was easy to pick _out_ of the crowd, and I barely had a few seconds' warning of a rapidly approaching mass of curly brown hair before I was dive tackled. "Harry!"

I shared a grin with the more-slowly-approaching pair of dentists as I awkwardly returned the hug of their daughter, the magical world's smartest 12-year-old. "Hermione, it's only been a week!" I insisted, "But I'm glad to see you too."

"Harry," greeted Dr. Jean Granger with a handshake, as Hermione finally released me so Dr. Helen Granger could also give me a quick hug.

"Jean, Helen, glad you could make it," I told them.

"I don't think there was any way we wouldn't," Helen said, looking fondly at the small girl who looked so excited she was in danger of vibrating right through the floor.

"I just knew it!" she insisted, "I knew he must be–" with a glance at the muggles nearby, she had the common sense to lower her voice so it wouldn't carry past our small group, "–magical. Only, with the four houses at the school and some of the things that come _close_ , but have clearly been changed to not violate the Statute of Secrecy, it had to be someone that was at least familiar with Hogwarts, and the way Professor Tabby is described it's _clearly_ someone who knows Professor McGonagall, and–"

"Hermione, breathe," I interrupted her, a moment before her father looked like he was about to do the same. She'd gotten a lot better about the run-on-sentence exposition since starting school, but still did it when excited. "Why don't you go get in line for the book signing? Tell him you're the friend I mentioned when you get up there."

Jean handed the young witch three well-cared-for but clearly frequently-read hardback novels as well as the new one they'd just bought downstairs and she hurried over to get into the signing line. "She's been mad about those books since they started coming out when she was seven," Helen explained.

"Hermione, mad about books? I don't believe it," I joked.

Her parents grinned fondly, but Jean shrugged, "She wasn't usually as interested in fiction, but the _Magimals_ series somehow called to her. How'd you wind up staying with the author?"

"He's a former Hogwarts student, apparently owed the headmaster a favor," I answered. "I didn't even know he was famous until he mentioned the signing and asked if I wanted to come." While the series was apparently blowing up the children's literary market all over these days, it had only started coming out in Britain while I'd been just about out of the Chicago orphanage, and by the time it started to get popular everywhere I wasn't in the market for kids' magical fiction.

"From his author photos in the back cover, I've always thought he seemed sad, somehow," Helen mused, looking at the man signing his books, conversing with the children. "And those scars on his face…"

While he was wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck even in summer, he couldn't hide the scars that made it look like some kind of large wild animal had raked a claw from his eyebrows all the way down his cheeks. I admitted, "They're on his arms, too, probably other places. You know he's only in his early thirties?"

"No! I would have guessed forties at least," she said, a bit of pity entering her voice.

"I asked him about my mother, but he said he didn't go to Hogwarts until she had already left, so he'd have to be," I shrugged, "I haven't really gotten him to talk about it much, but McGonagall mentioned he lost a lot of friends in the war. Probably had a really hard life." After familiarizing myself with my temporary guardian's books and from what little I'd been able to pick up from him over the last week, I believed that writing a novel series was therapy, probably immortalizing his dead friends in prose. I wondered if they'd all been animagi, or if he just felt like they had the positive attributes of the animal forms he gave them in the novels.

Hermione rushed back up, reading off the dedication he'd made in her book, "He signed it, 'For Miss Hermione Granger, a lion if I've ever met one, RJ Lupin.' He was so nice!"

I nodded, because that had also been my experience. After Dumbledore and McGonagall had tried to keep me locked up in Hogwarts for nearly a year, I'd expected they'd pass me off to someone that would basically be a summertime jailor. But he'd started out insisting I call him Remus and had been similarly easygoing from there.

A camera flash drew my attention to where Remus was posing with two small boys with light, mouse-brown hair to either side of him, a man who was probably their father taking the picture. The man handed the camera back to the larger of the two boys as Remus finished signing their book and then, for some reason, pointed in my direction. "Incoming," I warned the Grangers as the trio headed in our direction.

"Excuse me," their father started, seemingly feeling a little out of place when he noticed the Grangers. I wasn't exactly a great judge of fashion or British class consciousness, but Hermione and her parents were all dressed in a way I'd at least classify as "preppy" while the man and his sons were much closer to my own ensemble of jeans and a t-shirt. "I'm Jack Creevey, and these are my sons Colin and Dennis. Mr. Lupin suggested that you also went to…" he glanced at the Grangers as if curious whether they were in on a secret, "...his alma mater?"

"Hogwarts?" asked Hermione's father. Off of Mr. Creevey's nod, Jean continued, "I expect you got an interesting letter when Colin turned 11? The same thing happened with Hermione last year…"

The Grangers moved to the side to commiserate with Mr. Creevey over the plight of surprised parents of muggleborn students, leaving me and Hermione with the two tiny boys, each bouncing up and down with a million questions. Smirking at the girl, I said, "Hey, Hermione, why don't you tell the Creevey brothers about Hogwarts?" She looked like she wanted to protest, but realized she had a lot of excitable muggleborn karma to pay back, and nodded.

With the signing line finally clearing out, I left the Grangers educating the Creeveys and made my way over to Remus' table. I sidled up and quietly asked him, "They were also big fans and suddenly made the connection that you're a wizard?"

"Minerva apparently told them during her home visit, when she saw that they had my books," he answered. "I'll have to ask her to give me more warning in the future. Those boys are loud. Sorry to pawn them off on you."

"No worries," I grinned, "I passed them right on to the Grangers."

"Probably for the best. I don't know why Minerva doesn't deliberately put the new muggleborn parents in contact with others who've already gone through it." He started gathering up his pens when he noticed the shop staff was beginning to pack up the table. "Well, that was exhausting. Remind me to stand firm on not doing a world tour the next time my agent suggests it."

"At least you wouldn't have to spend a ton of time in transit," I suggested.

"Unfortunately, I would. She's a muggle, so I can't exactly suggest that she doesn't need to book hours and hours of plane travel because I'll just apparate every–" he broke off suddenly, nostrils flaring as his body tensed up. I turned to follow his look as a hugely muscled man in an overly-tight cheap suit ascended up the stairs. He had thinning gray hair loosely slicked back and his own array of scars on a face that didn't look fully human.

Tossing a copy of Lupin's latest book onto the empty table, he grinned through a set of teeth that had been filed to points and said, "Make it out to, 'My old friend, Fenrir Greyback.'"

## Old Friends

If the guy had showed up in Chicago, I'd assume he was some kind of gangster thug, but in the middle of a London bookstore I was going to guess Fenrir Greyback was just bad at dressing as a muggle. Facing him down across the folding table, Remus gave a halfhearted shrug and dismissively explained, "Sorry, you're a bit late for the signing. The pens are already all put away."

Greyback's eyes squinted and I thought I heard him _growl_ faintly at the remark, but he gave a close-lipped smile as if to keep up the game that they were friends. "I'm sure I can give you an address to bring it once you've found your pens again. Your family would like you to come visit. We had no idea where you could possibly be, until this event showed up in the paper."

"Oh, I have the address, and if you'd been welcome you would have received an invitation," Remus suggested. The two men hadn't blinked, their gazes locked, and I noticed Remus had dropped his wand out of his sleeve, barely concealed in front of the couple-dozen bookstore shoppers still milling around the upper level of Hatchard's.

If I was able to use magic over the summer, I'd have backed my temporary guardian up. As it was, I glanced around thinking about how hard it would be to evacuate the bystanders if spells started to fly. Unfortunately, what I saw was the Grangers and Creeveys walking up, Jean Granger and Jack Creevey in the lead as if they'd also spotted the standoff.

While it was probably a brave thing for the guys to do if this was an impending fight between muggles, I don't think they really understood the danger they'd just walked into. I wasn't sure myself, other than that Greyback might not even be fully human. "Everything alright over here?" asked Mr. Creevey, in a calm voice that might have, indeed, made a normal psychopath reconsider starting a fight.

Greyback, however, just flicked his gaze over, noticing Hermione, Colin, and Dennis. His forced smile became altogether more genuine, but the look in his eyes was terrifying. "Oh. Children." He had the legitimate nerve to show off his sharpened teeth and run his tongue over them. "Friends of yours, Remus?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Remus looked worried, and made a gamble, telling the beast of a man in a conversational tone, "I'm on a watch list, you know? If I do any magic outside of school, I don't just get a letter, I get aurors showing up. Populated area like this, they'd probably show up pretty much immediately."

"Good thing I don't see a wand, then," Greyback scoffed, sizing me up after having dismissed me as part of the scenery until that moment.

"Who needs a wand?" I asked him, putting my left hand forward in a defensive stance where the light would catch on the runes of my shield bracelet. Hermione, at least, seemed to pick up that they'd stepped into something serious. She started shoving the others further back behind me, knowing my shield could cover them all if necessary.

I deliberately didn't meet the guy's eyes, both because learning about legilimency had gotten me into the habit of avoiding eye contact and because he seemed like he'd take it as a challenge. But from what he saw in my face and body language, he realized I wasn't bluffing. Apparently he didn't like the odds, but he couldn't let things go without getting the last word. The maniac clearly memorized everyone's faces and inhaled as if he was _smelling us_ , then smirked, "Come home soon, Remus. Your family misses you. And you don't want me tracking down your _friends_ for current contact information."

With that, the monster in an off-the-rack suit turned his back and paused for a moment as if daring us to try something, then headed back down the stairs. "Who–" Jack started to ask before both Remus and I put up a hand to stop him talking. I could still hear Greyback's heavy footfalls heading down the stairs, slowly, as if waiting to overhear us talking. Shortly after I thought I'd heard him leave the shop, Remus relaxed out of his guarded stance and nearly collapsed back into his signing chair. Jack finished asking, "Who was that?"

"A very dangerous wizard who I've been avoiding for years," Remus explained, clearly exhausted from the adrenaline crash. "If you ever even _think_ you see him again, run."

"Not worth calling the aurors?" I asked.

Remus shook his head. "Avoiding them is a skill he's perfected over decades. He doesn't announce himself without a plan to get out before he's caught."

After a few more moments of tension, Helen suggested, "I guess we have even more to talk about at lunch. We're going to keep talking with Jack and the boys about what to expect. Do you want to join us, Harry? Mr. Lupin?"

"Love to, but I have to get to work soon," I demurred.

"And I need to report that encounter to the Ministry," Remus frowned. "But, please, let me walk you out so I can make sure he's moved on."

With a brief detour to let the management know that Remus was leaving, we headed outside and he checked the area to confirm that Greyback was long gone. I couldn't help but notice that his procedure seemed to involve _smelling_ as much as it did looking. As we split up for the two muggle families to head off to find a restaurant, I told Hermione, "Call me if you want to talk about the summer homework." It was nice to be staying somewhere that had a telephone.

"I will, and if…?" she trailed off, and I nodded to her implicit question about whether I'd help her do the ritual to hide her Trace so she could actually practice magic. I made myself a mental note to see if I could get some leftover demiguise fur at work. She grinned and waved, "Good. Talk to you later. It was great to see you. And to meet you, Mr. Lupin!"

We weren't even a mile from the Leaky Cauldron, so Remus and I started walking back after waving goodbye, rather than apparating. I gave him a couple blocks of silence before pressing, "Want to talk about it?"

He shook his head, but said, "Sorry you got mixed up in that. I hadn't heard from him in a decade, and good riddance. I guess it was too much to hope that he'd died quietly at the end of the war."

"Death Eater?"

"Not marked, but one of their allies," he explained.

"Do you think he's active again because Voldemort is?"

Remus actually stopped walking for a moment and I had to stop and turn, seeing the surprised look on his face. "You-know-who is…? Dumbledore and his secrets!" He frowned and started walking again. "What can you tell me?"

## Bippity Boppity Boo

I'd managed to give Remus the rundown just in time to floo out of the Leaky Cauldron, into the Three Broomsticks, and walk down the street to work before my shift started. It was only a summer job, but I didn't want to get a reputation for tardiness my first week there. Not that anyone _really_ seemed to notice, because unless it came to exacting times for rituals, a lot of the Wizarding World seemed to still be on the pre-industrial conception of schedules. I guess it made sense: they only had the one train to keep running on time.

Dervish and Banges was my favorite store in Hogsmeade, and I'd been in often enough on the weekends we were allowed to go into town that I'd talked a few times with Ms. Su Dervish, the shop owner. Apparently from the second generation of Dervishes born in Hogsmeade after her grandfather co-founded the shop, she was _extremely_ British, despite being of clear Persian extraction and playing up the Eastern clothing. She'd eventually figured out that I was both buying as many enchanting supplies from her as my finances would allow and that this was still a very small number of supplies. So she'd offered me a job over the summer, mostly planning to pay in store credit.

I was supposed to be helping out with enchantments in the back, but, of course, _someone_ at the ministry had figured out how to delay the request to get me licensed to do magic over the summer while on the store premises. So I was working the counter until that went through.

The store itself was about what I'd grown to expect of wizarding shops. You could pick it up and put it down in any Renaissance Festival and it would seem appropriate. The shop was all done in dark woods and Eastern silks, with a reasonable amount of multicolored light streaming in the high stained glass windows. Unlike other stores, the counter was only a few feet away from the door, the limited shelves up front full of low-margin reagents. There were a few shelves of higher-value products behind the counter, but most of the building's square footage was devoted to the employee-only workspaces and storage rooms in the back.

Someone, probably the original Dervish and Banges, had preferred to trust good solid architectural design instead of anti-theft charms to prevent schoolchildren on a field trip from wandering off with expensive talismans and arcane devices.

This all meant it wasn't really a store for browsing, like most of the others in Hogsmeade. Most of my retail training so far had been on reading the catalog of what we had in stock, and how to log a custom request for later owl delivery. While there weren't many customers, especially since I wasn't working during a school Hogsmeade weekend, when there were I had to give them my full attention. I was really hoping I'd get a license to work in the back soon.

My first customer of the day had been Mundungus Fletcher, an unwashed little redheaded guy who was really doing his best to give the impression of being a homeless leprechaun. I'd been warned about him on my first day, and had to deal with him three times already in my first week. It took twenty minutes to convince him that Ms. Dervish wasn't interested in a sack full of "guaranteed fresh" diricawl feathers (which looked a lot more like pigeon feathers to me), and he _definitely_ couldn't go into the back to wait for her. Proving that he, probably more than the school kids, was the reason expensive stock wasn't out front, I was certain one of the bins of reagents was just a little lower as he finally left.

The door didn't swing shut as fast as it should have after Fletcher left, and I glanced over from trying to eyeball the remaining stock in the bins to notice a strange ripple in the air. It was a lot like the special effect they used in _Predator_ , light bent around a figure instead of true invisibility. Not expecting an invasion by someone under a disillusion veil, my reaction of throwing myself into the warded back room was short circuited by a woman's voice complaining, "I thought he'd never leave."

I recognized the voice, but it didn't _really_ make me want to go hide any less. Mentally beating down my adrenaline rush and trying to keep a straight face, I instead said, "Godmother. I wondered when I could expect you to visit." Not taking my eyes off the distortion in space, I reached back and pulled the door behind me all the way closed, so our conversation wouldn't be overheard in the back room.

With a whispered " _Colloportus_ " to lock the front door, Bellatrix Lestrange dropped the veil. A muggle would have guessed that the woman that bled into visibility was in her late twenties or early thirties, though I knew that she was probably about forty, since she had been in the same school year as my mother. Even though she was, quite literally, old enough to be my mother, I had to admit she was gorgeous. Apparently she'd planned to visit veiled instead of disguised, so she was wearing her preferred style: techno-industrial fetishwear as interpreted by a medieval tailor. With her loose curly black hair, pale skin, and height, she made it work for her.

Of course, you only had to take a look at her eyes and posture to have any appreciative thoughts immediately squelched. Humans are, for the most part, very good at detecting dangerous, feral predators.

"I was so interested to hear you had a _job_ ," she explained, taking in the room with evident interest, "that I wanted to give you a few days so you could tell me what it's _like_. Working for a living is so delightfully _common_. And you have to just stand here, and talk to anyone who comes in. They could be a murderer. They could be _boring_."

"At least probably not both," I shrugged. "It's fine. I'm supposed to be doing enchanting in the back, but my license hasn't come through yet. It hasn't been that busy."

"Fascinating," she declared, then abruptly switched topics and quickly stepped up to the counter and leaned into my personal space, "Do you have them?"

I reached into the pouch on my belt, which I'd charmed to be much bigger on the inside and which I thought of as my bag of holding, and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle. I opened it on the counter to reveal two large tomes and three scrolls. All of them had a few singes of fire damage. "This is what I could get to before the fire. The rest of the library burned."

"A shame," she pouted, but flipped through the books I'd grabbed for her on the way out of my murderous mentor's burning house nearly a year earlier. "These _are_ good, though. Consider it credit toward our debts." As if remembering something, she pointed out, "Don't worry, I may have some other things you can do to further balance our books within the year."

While I was fairly certain that my godmother was just a mad former Death Eater who'd spent the last decade evading the aurors, and not the fae noble she liked to imply she was, she _did_ fixate heavily on debts, as the high sidhe were rumored to do. And, as much as I hated her methods of teaching, she _had_ taught me quite a few useful spells and rituals, and I couldn't quite bring myself to do the sensible thing and set her up to get arrested. Some days, I wondered if the debts _were_ a subtle kind of fae magic that worked like a compulsion not to renege. I just asked, "Oh? Like what?"

"I'm expecting some friends from out of town, who may require someone with discretion to help them get acclimated. Nothing too taxing."

It was the way she said "out of town" that led me to believe she wasn't talking about helping run interference for other dark wizards. "Have you been doing more apparating through the raths to let things through?"

"It's a thankless job," she sighed. "So much effort. I'd hoped you'd be helping me. I gave you that map and everything."

She had, indeed, showed me that apparition at certain "faerie mounds" let you go further with less effort, and provided a map. What she'd neglected to mention was that doing so stretched the veil between the mortal world and the Nevernever, allowing _things_ to squeeze through. "The one time I did, a pair of leucrottas got out and attacked the school."

She gave me a small smirk that I thought meant she was impressed. "You're too clever, Harry. I didn't tell you because I _know_ you're afraid to use anything even slightly dangerous. You're too in your own way." She shrugged, "But, fine, _don't_ use an extremely efficient mode of transportation because you're afraid some fantastic beasts will show up to give the Ministry something to do. We're almost done with that part anyway." She took one last look around the shop, then veiled herself again, cancelled the lock on the door, and stepped out with, "I'll be in touch."

## Train of Thought

If the wizards of Britain were distributed evenly with the muggle population, Manchester should have had at least a few hundred of them, including dozens of Hogwarts alumni. However, the distribution was _not_ even. Only London had any truly significant wizarding population within a muggle city, especially of serious, _practicing_ wizards, mostly due to walking access to the Ministry and Diagon Alley. The rest were much more likely to live on the fringes of small villages, or even in the middle of nowhere. It kept the risk of getting discovered doing magic lower, and, with a floo connection and apparition, it barely mattered where a wizard actually lived in physical space.

This was all well and good unless you were a teenager too young to apparate and living with your muggle family in a big city with a dearth of floo connections. Penelope Clearwater was basically cut off from the greater wizarding world for the summer. Percy Weasley had resigned himself to spend the summer in his room writing letters to her to keep up their recently-formed romantic relationship.

"Why don't you just take public transportation, Percy?" I'd asked him when he'd complained about it to me. Obviously, they didn't cover something useful like that in muggle studies class.

Owing my roommate a muggle studies field trip (though too late for it to help with his OWL test), I'd flooed and met him after work at the only public fireplace we could locate in Manchester, the first wizarding shop to sell rainproof cloaks in the style of the Mackintosh. We'd then had a very productive half hour of figuring out the city's transit system, including a ride on a Metrolink tram that had apparently just opened a couple weeks prior.

Penny, whose overprotective parents didn't really want their 16-year-old daughter braving public transit on her own, was overjoyed for the company. She'd even sprung for pizza at the corner shop in her neighborhood, which was good because Percy and I were both broke enough that the couple bucks to get across town seriously ate into our food budget. Not that Penny was much wealthier than we were. After catching up for a couple of hours and planning how to proceed the next year on our research project now that we'd finally gotten a handle on the patronus charm, I was surprised that Percy left with me after he gave Penny a chaste kiss.

"Thought you'd want to stay after, man," I told him. "I was trying to dip out and give you two some alone time."

He blushed slightly as we boarded the bus, which would take us to the tram, which would take us to another bus. "The chance for parental interference is a lot lower if they think this was a study meetup, and that is a much harder sell if they get wind of us staying without you there," he explained. "Also, your help with the return trip is appreciated to make sure I have learned the whole process."

I kind of figured it had more to do with being alone with his girlfriend after dark in a muggle restaurant being a bigger step than they were ready for after the much more _supervised_ dating they'd managed at school. As prefects they had to set a good example, so probably didn't spend their patrol hours in a broom closet like so many other students did at Hogwarts, and the rest of their social time was in the library or in public at Hogsmeade. I didn't press him though, changing the subject to answer questions about other unfamiliar muggle things we saw on the route.

We got back to the raincoat shop as the summer sun was finally setting, and I had a brief moment of appreciating that Remus actually remembered what it was like to be a teenager and had trusted me to roam, even though I was sure Dumbledore or McGonagall had suggested he keep an eye on me. It had been nice to just get out and do something with friends without constant adult supervision. Even though I'd decided to stay at Hogwarts, it still felt like a prison sometimes.

I was so wrapped up in enjoying the feeling of freedom that I almost missed the guy who was dead set on putting me in _actual_ prison. The figure I'd initially taken as a shop dummy in the window moved as we walked up, and there was Dawlish blocking us from getting in the door. In hindsight, his old tan trenchcoat wasn't nearly nice enough for the shop.

"What're you up to in Manchester, Dresden?" the aging Auror growled, running a cigarette-stained hand through graying blond hair.

I shrugged, mouthing off, "Trying to figure out where you got that lovely coat so I can find one of my own? I really think I could pull off the look."

"Cute," he frowned. "Seems more likely you're here to rob the place just before closing."

I rolled my eyes. "You know I used their floo to get here a few hours ago. That's why you're here, because you have nothing better to do than come running every time I travel. I hope you have some kind of alarm set up, and you're not just watching the system all day every day waiting to come see me."

He gave me a nasty smirk. "Hmm, good point. You were clearly up to something in the city proper. Best take you in to see if we can figure out what you were planning."

"Excuse me, Auror Dawlish," Percy interjected. A blink of surprise from the guy made me wonder if he'd been so focused on me he'd totally missed that I wasn't alone. "Are you actually following up on a crime report? Because it seems like Habeas Corpus applies in this situation quite strongly."

"You Dresden's solicitor now, Weasley?" he asked, his smirk turning sour on him.

Percy just shrugged, "For lack of a better check on abuse of authority, I suppose I shall have to do for the moment." I was briefly impressed at how hard the guy was going, since he was rarely one to buck any kind of leadership, but he _did_ add in, "And, for your edification, we were meeting a friend who lives in town. I can vouch for Harry's movements for our entire time in Manchester, and Penelope Clearwater can further support everything but the travel to her neighborhood and back."

I couldn't help but imagine Dawlish twirling a long mustache and cursing how he was foiled again, as he grimaced and choked out, "Careful who you're friends with Weasley. So easy to turn from an alibi to an accessory. Keep your nose clean, Dresden." Before I could snark back at him, he disapparated away.

"Thanks, man," I said, frowning at the spot the paragon of wizarding justice had just abandoned.

Percy nodded, looking very unhappy, "He really does have it in for you. Things must be slow in law enforcement if he has the time…"

I was thinking about that assertion when I tumbled out of the floo into Remus' house, which wasn't anywhere near any of the other places I'd been already that day. He'd bought a smallish freestanding house in High Wycombe, which had a bit of a yard between it and the muggle neighbors and backed onto the nature preserve. It was about thirty miles west of the middle of London, and he'd told me it was far enough out of the city to not be squeezed in while still close enough that he could pretend to his publisher that he was commuting by car when he had to make trips.

The floo-connected fireplace exited into a cozy den at the back of the house, which was home to most of Remus' muggle library, comfortable chairs, and a well-loved brown couch. From the rear window, it had a great view of his fenced-in back yard, which he'd turned into a relaxing grotto where a young willow tree loomed over a koi pond. Remus and an older man who looked vaguely familiar were sitting in chairs, and seemed to have been making small talk before I interrupted them.

"Ah, good, here he is, as expected," the guest said, regarding me over the most fabulous pair of muttonchop sideburns I'd ever seen. Since he kept the rest of his white hair short, they really stood out. He was wearing understated brown and red robes of a more efficient style than I was used to on wizards: they seemed more like quidditch armor than a pureblood's outfit.

"Sorry, I didn't know you were waiting on me," I apologized, trying to get a read on what was going on.

"No apologies, I was unannounced. Surprise inspection, very busy, couldn't have scheduled it."

That got my guard up. "Auror Dawlish already gave me a surprise inspection a few minutes ago."

"Oh? Oh! Yes, Mathilda mentioned something about that. I'll have a word with Amelia. If he has the free time, we could use him. Especially missing Macnair, bad business, everyone will have to pitch in. So many new beasts popping up, we're spread thin."

I'd picked "Mathilda" out of all the non-sequiturs and finally made a connection, "Mr. Grimblehawk, I take it?" My friend (maybe more than that, if she had her way) had mentioned that her uncle had some important Ministry position, and the family resemblance was probably why he looked familiar.

"Ah, yes, indeed. Good work. Abraham Grimblehawk, normally on a desk, but out and about because of the staffing issues. I suppose Mathilda mentioned me?"

"From time to time," I nodded, still not totally sure why he was in the house. How much had she told him about her ongoing quest to date me? "I haven't really heard from her since school got out. She was doing an internship?"

"Far busier than she expected, that girl," he nodded. "All hands means all hands. I daresay she'll be learning a lot!" He had a fond look, then recalled his inspection, "Anyway. Everything okay here? No concerns?"

I shot a look at Remus, who'd been remarkably quiet and unhelpful for the strange conversation, and he just nodded at me and said, "Be honest."

"It's been great," I told Abraham. I was about to tell him how glad I was that Remus wasn't keeping me locked up, but bit my tongue about telling a random authority figure that I basically had no curfew and could go wherever I wanted. "No concerns so far. Should I?"

"Just due diligence. Remus has never been an issue. He's a success story. Very well. Glad to meet you, Dresden." He stood up and gave Remus and me a bow, which we returned. "Must be going! Might actually get to bed on time if I do! Ta!" He tossed some floo powder into the fireplace, declared he was going to the Ministry of Magic, and disappeared in a burst of green flames.

"So…" I asked Remus, "What the hell was that about?"

My temporary guardian sighed, and admitted, "You have your problems with the Ministry and I have mine. Dumbledore suggested the pairing because he thought we could relate. Honestly, Abraham is one of my favorites to deal with." With a nod that clearly indicated that was all he wanted to explain, he just said, "Goodnight, Harry," and went up to bed.

After the encounter with Fenrir Greyback that morning and now this, I was starting to have some real questions about Remus Lupin.


	16. Dark Room 2: Secret Orders

## The Old Crowd

The Weasley house was not the hobbit hole I'd expected from it being called "the Burrow" as its floo address. While I was momentarily disappointed, the reality was in many ways more interesting. Looking around the den that surrounded the fireplace the word that entered my brain first was "cluttered." Not just the furnishings and decorations, of which there were a riot in many different styles, but in the architecture itself. Even from the inside, it was clear that an ancient farmhouse had simply been expanded upwards over the years in a way that would only work with magic.

The view from the _outside_ would give me vertigo.

That view was still a few minutes off, however, as I only had seconds after stepping out of the fireplace to take it all in before I was being nearly tackled by a redhead who was more apron than witch. Percy's mother, as I'd discovered the previous summer, was a hugger. "Harry! I'm so excited you could make it! Everyone's outside!" I was freed quickly because of the visitor who tumbled out of the fire right behind me. "And Remus! This is wonderful! It's been too long."

"Pleasure to see you, Molly," Remus told her. I noticed that her hug seemed slightly perfunctory, if no less genuine. Maybe she'd just realized that he wasn't a hugger, or was something else keeping her from fully embracing the man? He handed her a couple of copies of his new book, "For Ginny and her friend."

Taking the books, Mrs. Weasley grinned, "She'll be so excited. We were sorry to miss the signing, but you know we need Arthur to have any luck navigating muggle London, and having him there presents its own problems. But I'm sure she'll devour this one like all the rest. She's been loving those Tamora Pierce novels you gave her. So much more empowering fiction for young girls in the muggle world than in wizarding bookshops!"

"Where were the two of you last year?" I groaned. "I had to get by on Lockhart novels for months until Hermione started having her parents send us reading material from home."

"Oh! Lockhart! I love his books!" she insisted. "But I agree that there's not a lot of other page turners besides his in the wizarding world these days."

There was a clatter down an almost Escher-esque staircase done in rickety wood as the Weasley twins, Fred and George, descended into the room. "Harry!" Fred greeted.

"And some bloke who looks vaguely familiar!" smirked George.

"Yes, I get it, I should come around more often. Point well made, Weasleys," Remus gave a wan smile.

"Boys! Why don't you show Harry around outside while Remus and I catch up?" their mother insisted.

"Sure thing!" Fred agreed.

"Come along, Harry, so much of 'the old crowd' to meet!" George suggested.

We walked out through what I assumed was the back of the house, my eyes crossing as the number of steps didn't match the distance it looked like across a kitchen that should have been cramped but held a table large enough for the nine-person family and tons of ongoing cooking projects. I needed to ask Bob later how dangerous it was to use extension charms on the ground floor of a multi-story house already being held up by magic.

While the summer had been somewhat damp and cool so far, on this second Saturday of July the weather outside was at least mostly dry for the Weasley cookout, and I couldn't be sure magic wasn't involved. Or maybe their neighborhood, which was apparently on the spur of England south of Wales, had enough of a different climate from London and Manchester to make the difference? British weather was confusing.

Multiple picnic tables had been set up on the back lawn, beginning to be laden with food, and I chanced a dizzying look up at the towering house behind before taking in the yard that was bounded by extensive gardens and a large hedge. Over a dozen people were conversing in the backyard, most of them around Mrs. Weasley and Remus' age, but a few looked much older. I also noticed Ron, the youngest Weasley boy, talking to his year-mate Neville Longbottom, and Percy was holding a butterbeer and managing to not look too bored as part of an adult conversation.

"So _what's_ the deal with this?" I asked the twins. "Percy said something about a bunch of old Gryffindors?"

"Pretty much," nodded Fred. "Mum and Dad's friends from school. And sometimes some _really_ old Gryffindors. Dumbledore and McGonagall even usually come by."

"We think it's not just their friends, though," confided George. "Neville's mum started getting everyone together every year when we were little. I think they all fought You-Know-Who together. Or at least our uncles did? Mum's brothers definitely died in the war."

Speaking of Neville's mother, a woman that couldn't be anyone else was coming over. Short, round faced, and with dark hair she kept close-cropped, it was clear where the herbology-obsessed first-year got most of his looks. With her was a taller man with big ears and curly hair that provided the rest of Neville's features. Unlike some of the others who were wearing jeans and button-downs, both were wearing full robes, though they seemed closer to the functional style I'd seen Mr. Grimblehawk wearing the night before than pureblood party robes. "You must be Harry," she said when the couple got closer. "I'm Alice Longbottom and this is Frank. We just wanted to thank you for all the help you gave Neville last year… especially saving him from Quirrell."

"He's a good kid," I shrugged, uncomfortable with the praise. "I was happy to help. Didn't even know he'd mention it to you."

"He's received _quite_ the talking to about the risks he and his friends took," Mr. Longbottom insisted. "But after we grilled the headmaster about it, and my mother talked to Minerva… we decided they weren't unjustified. I just hope the situation doesn't devolve so completely in the future."

"So was this year _unusual_ , or…?" I asked, not convinced that such risks would be easy to avoid in the future, after the year I had.

Neville's parents shared a look, and Frank admitted, "For when _we_ were in school, not really. But we'd hoped our children's school years wouldn't be in the middle of a war, as ours were. But with–"

"Let's save that for later, dear," Mrs. Longbottom cut him off. "Why don't you go meet everyone else and get some food? Molly's cooking is always amazing."

Summarily dismissed and realizing the twins had wandered off rather than talk to adults, I moved over to the buffet-style setup where people had begun fixing plates. A burly man in a coat was across the table from me, his graying red hair making me assume he was a Weasley relative, but his facial scars and limp speaking to a darker past than the others. What I'd assumed was a monocle was, up close, some kind of prosthetic eye, which seemed fixed on me for the moment but didn't track with his natural eye. I tried not to stare, but something about his movements across the table caught my attention, so I wasn't completely surprised when he produced a wand and shouted, "Dresden! _Petrificus Totalus!_ "

Fortunately I'd been training my reflexes to avoid spells at short range rather than shield, after Quirrell had stunned me the previous year. Thus, I didn't waste time trying to get my shield bracelet out or risk the underaged magic charge shielding could entail. Instead, I simply dropped prone to put the table in between us, the white light of the spell passing over my head. Also fortunately, I hadn't started loading up a plate yet, but in the background Ron wasn't so lucky. Thanks to his defense training he'd also dropped prone and hadn't been body-bound, but _had_ dropped food all over himself and Neville.

I had just started trying to figure out a plan for if my unexpected attacker followed up, bracing to tip the table over onto him, when I realized he'd stepped back and was chortling in laughter. "Alastor! Honestly!" shouted a middle-aged, dark-haired woman in a green shawl and robes.

"Constant vigilance, Emm!" the man insisted. "Dresden has it. Arthur's boy, too, which was unexpected." He turned his attention to me and asked, "Were you going to tip the table on me? That might have worked, too. Then _Molly_ would have killed me."

As I cautiously stood up, attention on the mad-eyed maniac, I noted Mrs. Weasley vanishing Ron's dropped food and cleaning him and Neville up while shooting my assailant a look that she might _still_ kill him. Mr. Weasley hurried up and said, "Sorry, Harry. Auror Moody usually saves his tests until after dinner."

Perplexed by the whole situation, I latched onto the last name and all I could think to say was, "So not related, then?"

"Hah! Distantly, like most wizards," Moody laughed, "though they tell me Arthur's eldest looks a bit like me." He went back to loading his own plate, signaling that the test was over but seeming pleased that I was still watching his hands. "No hard feelings, Dresden. Needed to see if Albus' recommendation carried weight."

"Recommendation?" I asked, suddenly wondering if I hadn't just been invited as Percy's friend and to get Remus to come, but because the headmaster was up to something. I'd noticed everyone prepare for a fight when Moody tried to hex me but nobody freaked out. The twins' mention of them being war friends made me wonder if this wasn't a barbecue, but a war council.

" _After dinner_ ," insisted Mrs. Longbottom, walking up and shooting quelling glances at everyone.

While I was anxious about what they had planned, her earlier advice panned out. The food _was_ delicious.

## Marching Orders

There was a definite hierarchy to the kids' table, with Percy and me at one end, a buffer of the twins, then Ron across from Neville, and finally three young girls, each with a different hair color: the redhead was the youngest Weasley, but I didn't know who the other two girls were. From the way the dark-haired one periodically stuck her tongue out at or otherwise tried to distract Neville, though, I assumed she was a Longbottom.

"Chin up, Ron," Fred told his brother. "At least you ducked."

"Yeah," grumbled George. "Mad-Eye has actually hexed _us_ before."

I nodded. "You did a good job, Ron. If it had been ten seconds later I'd be covered in food too."

The tiny blond at the end of the table interjected, matter-of-factly, "That would be very bad. You're already surrounded by nargles. You shouldn't give them a food source, or they'll nest."

I noticed everyone else had a look like they weren't surprised she'd said it, but didn't believe her. "Oh?" I asked, "Why do you say that?"

She explained, "They're attracted to emotional nodes, and your aura has plenty of those for them to draw from. I don't think they're attached yet, but they're trying."

Ginny Weasley quietly cautioned the girl, "Luna, what did we talk about?" To me, she boldly stated, "This is Luna Lovegood, my Girl Friday. She has some—interesting—ideas but she's very smart. She's probably going to be in Ravenclaw."

"I'll be sad to miss these Gryffindor parties, when it's certain I'm an eagle instead of a lion," Luna shrugged.

"I don't know. I think certain Ravenclaws will be invited next year," I said, eyeing Percy. As our adventure earlier in the week had proven, getting Penny out would have been a challenge, and I didn't think either was ready for her to meet Percy's whole family yet, but next year, when she could apparate on her own, might be a big difference. "But, anyway, thanks for the warning, Luna. Do you think being behind wards would make a difference?"

The blond absently twirled a long strand of hair while thinking, before stating, "Maybe. But extension charms make it worse. You should get some charms to target them specifically."

I nodded, considering, only for Ron to scoff, "You're not taking this seriously? Luna's mental!"

Percy snapped, "Ronald!" while Ginny punched him in the arm. Luna tried to seem like she wasn't bothered but I thought I caught a twitch of being hurt.

"I think what Luna's referring to as nargles are the air-based equivalents of nixies," I lectured to the table, most of whom didn't seem to believe her even if they were less rude about it than Ron. "They both would have a hard time existing outside of the Nevernever for long, and would be functionally invisible, so easy to miss when they _do_ get through." I was honestly making most of that up as I went, but wouldn't be surprised if Nevernever pests _were_ constantly hovering on the other side of the veil from wizards, trying to draw off their energy. If the girl could see that kind of thing, it would be a very useful gift and would probably make her seem crazy to people that didn't have it.

Her already-prominent eyes got huge, and a smirk of validation twitched on Luna's face. "Clearly, the Rotfang Conspiracy hasn't gotten to you yet, Harry, unlike the rest of them. I'll talk to daddy about getting you a subscription to the _Quibbler_ so you know what else to look for."

The table conversation continued for a few minutes, but I was distracted by seeing that Dumbledore and McGonagall had arrived. The headmaster was clearly working his way through greeting all of the adults at the other tables, but our head of house made a couple greetings then headed in our direction, Mrs. Weasley in tow. When they got close, McGonagall produced a pair of envelopes and handed them to Percy and me. "Normally these arrive later, but I was checking in with Griselda and mentioned I'd see both of you today–"

"It's your OWL results!" interrupted Mrs. Weasley, thrilled.

Everyone clustered around Percy as he shivered with anxiety opening his results, and that gave me a minute to myself to look mine over. The biggest surprise was that I'd scraped out Acceptables to pass history and astronomy. Everything else was about where I'd expected it: scratching the bottom of Exceeds Expectations in herbology and transfiguration, better EEs for charms and potions, and a range of Outstandings for defense, runes, arithmancy, and muggle studies.

From the squeals at the other side of the table, Percy had done as well as I'd expected. "Twelve OWLs!" Mrs. Weasley shouted, "Second one in the family! I'm so proud of you, Percy!"

"From Griselda's intimations, Mr. Dresden also did quite well," suggested McGonagall, after Percy's mother had gotten all the hugging out of her system.

I nodded, handing over the report. "Ten, though at least two of those Percy basically carried me on."

"While part of me wished you'd done less well so a lesson would be learned about homework," McGonagall began, staring me down, "I am nonetheless quite pleased. Congratulations to both of you."

We discussed it for a couple more minutes, before Dumbledore spoke up loud enough for everyone to hear, "If everyone is done eating, perhaps the younger members of our gathering might wish to go play while we have a boring adult meeting?" It was probably about seven, but that still meant plenty of sunlight. The twins and Ron were obviously torn about being dismissed and not getting to hear adult secrets, but looked longingly at their broom shed.

"It's fine," I shrugged, wondering why Dumbledore was so bad at figuring out kids. He should have said it was everyone's annual time to figure out their taxes. "I can finally show you guys how bad I am on a broom."

"Actually, if Harry and Percy could stay," suggested the headmaster, "you might be able to provide some insight on a few matters we're to discuss."

Mrs. Weasley looked like she wanted to argue about our inclusion, but he just gave her a quelling look and she grudgingly relented with, "Everyone else, go play." Just as grudgingly, the younger kids wandered off, though the boys shot Percy and me glances like they expected a blow-by-blow later.

Once the seven of them were clearly out of earshot, everyone pulled their mismatched chairs and benches into a circle, Dumbledore conjured himself a large, plush chair, and he started up. "First, allow me to again thank Alice and Molly for continuing to organize these get-togethers. While the current situation is worrisome, it might not have reached a level where I was comfortable reconvening the group over it. But since we're already gathered," he gestured fondly at the assembled crowd, "we might as well begin to mobilize."

"How much has everyone else heard?" asked Frank. "Neville told us about what happened, and he's not prone to exaggerating, but…" he trailed off, upset by what we'd lived through.

"Harry was also an eyewitness, so perhaps could elaborate?" prompted the headmaster.

I shrugged, and tried to keep it brief, "Voldemort," I paused as a few people took in shocked gasps, "tried to possess me last summer. When that failed it looks like he possessed Professor Quirrell. He spent the year trying to get the Philosopher's Stone. He eventually started killing unicorns for their blood as he burned Quirrell out. While the headmaster was briefly out of the school a few weeks ago, he went for it. The kids tried to stop him, and managed to distract him long enough for me to get there. We fought."

I was thinking about whether to try to break down the whole fight when Dumbledore suggested, "If you're willing, it may be a benefit to replay the event so there are no questions?" I gave him a confused glance and a shrug, so he reached into an expanded pouch and withdrew a large box, which he opened to reveal a rune-etched basin. "This is a pensieve. It allows one to display memories for others to view."

Moody interjected, looking at the Longbottoms, "Have we made any progress getting them approved for law enforcement?"

Mr. Longbottom shook his head, "Given that Albus has the only functioning one in Britain, there hasn't been a lot of political will to look into it, even if he'd be willing to share. The Dark contingent has greatly oversold how easy it is to fabricate memories." He shrugged helplessly, "If that's the political battle we want to fight, I can try harder. But there are a lot of powerful interests that don't want us to have that option."

The scarred auror snarled, cursing the Wizengamot under his breath, while Dumbledore continued, "Fortunately, we are not so limited. Mr. Dresden? If you will, simply recall the battle and I'll withdraw it." I nodded and did as he touched his wand to my temple, pulling loose a silvery strand. Honestly, the ability to encode sense memories into a fluid was more interesting to me than the playback device. I'd have to ask Bob if there were any other uses for that trick. "Our gathering is sufficiently large that I think I'll just play it back above the basin. Anyone that wants a more detailed look is welcome to one afterwards."

At the tap of his wand, a hologram of my fight with Quirrell began to play. If I'd known that's what would happen, I would have visualized Princess Leia asking for help instead, just to see the reactions. After the playthrough, which had only taken a couple of minutes even though it seemed longer while I was doing it, several people asked to view it in more detail. They stuck their faces into the basin and _disappeared_ for less time than the memory took to play at full speed but longer than made any sense. What _was_ this artifact?

"'Just a mouse,' Harry?" Percy muttered, having seen my patronus in the memory.

I shrugged and grinned apologetically, having undersold the bear-sized dog I'd produced to drive off the spectre of Voldemort, "I didn't want to psych you out for your OWLs."

When everyone had returned, Dumbledore added, "While this was happening, I had been called to the Ministry under false pretenses, where Walden Macnair attempted to sneak up on me and attack with a dagger. He missed, but got away in the confusion."

"Told you to keep an eye on that bastard," Moody grumbled.

Dumbledore nodded and allowed, "I believe it was, indeed, my constant vigilance about the man that allowed me to avoid his strike. I also believe he was rushed into attacking, because a portkey activated to extract him shortly after the attempt, otherwise we would have caught him." With the auror mollified, he continued, "Examining my own memory of the event, I believe he was attempting to steal my blood, not assassinate me. I'm currently researching what he hoped to do, but if anyone else has the time to research into blood rituals, your input is appreciated."

"Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken…" muttered Remus. When he realized he had everyone's attention, he explained, "It's a pretty common dark ritual component that comes up a lot in mastery-level defense. It can make it hard to determine if a person was killed by vampires or dark wizards."

"I hadn't realized you'd finished your mastery, Remus," Dumbledore pinned him with his gaze.

"Not quite," he demurred, "I'm hoping to have time to finish it off this year now that I'm between book commitments to my publisher."

The headmaster frowned, and looked at the rest of the crowd, "And I suppose the rest of you are still unavailable to teach?" A bunch of head shakes and muttered excuses led him to explain, "Quirinus was already a poor choice to teach defense, even had he not been possessed, but he was the best option I had last year. This year, the school board is putting forward a choice I have even less faith in. Surely any of you would be an improvement…"

"Figure out how to dispel the damned curse, Albus," insisted Moody. "Going toe to toe with Death Eaters every night, our survival chances are still better than spending a year teaching that class."

I'd heard about how the defense position had trouble keeping teachers, but I'd assumed the students were exaggerating. If all the adults were worried about it too, it might be interesting to look into. What kind of entropy curse would you need to ensure that there would be a different teacher every year, that wouldn't be immediately obvious? But in the meantime, I asked, "Does it just affect the official teacher?" Everyone nodded cautiously, so I suggested, "We were already doing defense tutoring for some of the kids on the weekends. Having grown-ups come help with that would probably be a lot better than what Percy and I can manage?"

Everyone seemed to like that compromise, and Dumbledore gave me an appreciative nod, "Very well, we shall give the board's suggestion a chance, though I have worries about young Mr. Lockhart's actual teaching capabilities…"

Percy and I shared a look of horror, while Mrs. Weasley beamed in delight.

## The Terrifying Wolf-Werewolf

The rest of the meeting had just been telling the group to keep an eye and ear out for anything that sounded related, and relay it back to Dumbledore. I'd gotten the impression that Percy and I were still not fully trusted to be part of whatever war council they represented, and might not be informed of further developments if we weren't directly relevant.

I'd at least mentioned my stymied license to work at enchanting over the summer to the Longbottoms and Moody, and, sure enough, it showed up Monday morning with no official explanation for the delay. It had been nice to start on the actual work I'd been hired to do rather than having to work the counter.

After the party, Remus had started to look like he was getting sick, and mentioned that he was going on an overnight work trip Tuesday, which would have seemed like a terrible idea if he actually was catching a cold. I just nodded like I didn't have any suspicions. I _did_ stop by a used book shop on the way back from work that evening.

"Hey Bob, wake up, new romance novels," I insisted to the skull I'd set up in my room once I was sure Remus was gone for the night.

My spiritual research assistant yawned, animating the skull, points of fire lighting the eye sockets. "Weird dreams in that extension charm bag."

"Sorry, Bob, it's at least another year of that. I can't exactly set you up anywhere obvious until I'm out on my own."

"No, it's fine, I've been through a lot worse. Ooh, Renaissance bodice rippers!" he examined the stack of smut I'd bought as a bribe. "You know, I bet we could talk Mathilda into trying out one of those outfits. They're not exactly historically accurate, but pretty simple to transfigure out of a common witch's robe…"

"That's on you, Bob," I groaned. "I'm not going to lead that girl on."

"Why not? She's obviously way into you. And uninhibited. It's a win-win-win: you wipe that scowl off your face you've been wearing all year, she gets what she wants, and I get to set up in the corner and enjoy a little light theatrical reenactment of my favorite stories."

I considered trying to explain how the still-recent betrayal and probable death of Elaine, the love of my life, was a huge impediment to my dating interests, but the largely-amoral skull wouldn't get it. Instead, I just shook my head, "No, Bob."

"Fine. I'm just over here looking out for your interests. You know you're wasting your sexual prime, right? Boys peak way earlier than girls. It's a grand cosmic joke, when you really think about it, given the normal dating ages being inverted." He finally seemed to notice my scowl had intensified from the one I'd apparently been wearing all year. "Fine. What do you want to do tonight?"

"Tell me about werewolves."

"We're in Britain and it's the full moon, so I assume you're talking about the common European wizarding variety?"

"I guess so," I answered, wondering if there was more than one kind but explaining, "Remus Lupin, my temporary guardian, is out 'on a business trip' tonight and was sick the last few days. There have been multiple people showing up making hints about how he's unsafe. Other things, too. But I'm curious whether I should be worried."

The skull's eyeflames flickered as he considered, then he explained, "Could be, especially with a name like that. If that's his real last time, I wonder if it's a family curse. Anyway, I'm not sure how common the curse has gotten recently. Historically, it's a variation of the Loup Garou, the werewolf so nice they named it twice."

"Wait, what?" I asked, fumbling for a pad and pen to take notes.

"Garou is the French term for werewolf. But over time they started using it as a more general term for that kind of shapeshifter. Hence, 'Loup Garou' is a wolf-werewolf. I guess you could have an Ours Garou for a bear-werewolf or a Tigre Garou for a tiger-werewolf, that kind of thing. The other curse types are much rarer, though, especially in Europe."

"So Remus is a Loup Garou?"

Bob rocked his skull a bit in negation, and said, "Not likely. If he was, there's no way the Ministry would let him live on his own if they knew. True Loup Garou are scary powerful. But around the 16th century, someone cursed a wizard who was already into the dark arts in a big way. He tried to cure himself, but wound up mutating the curse.

"Normal Loup Garou are limited to the one cursed, or maybe the whole family line. Not that many people actually survive getting attacked by one, but if you did you wouldn't have any risk of becoming a werewolf yourself. The wizarding strain of it, though, can pass on to someone with enough magic who gets bitten by a transformed werewolf."

"So we're talking full-on _American Werewolf in London_ level horror movie, here?" I asked.

"I don't think I saw that one. They're definitely aggressive to people, though. But if they're far enough away, especially with other werewolves or friendly animals, they can just kind of try to act out normal wolf behaviors. And you can lock them up in a reasonably strong cage. They don't really keep their human intelligence, so a decent combination lock is good enough to lock yourself up."

"And there's no cure? Is infection guaranteed on a bite?"

"You're thinking too scientifically. It's not a disease, it's a curse. And they tend to have a bad reputation with other wizards because every one of them _accepted_ the curse on being bitten."

"So Remus _wanted_ to be a werewolf?" I asked, surprised.

"There's the trick of it. One of them gives you a little friendly bite, you get the opportunity to accept the curse, but why would you? If you get brutally mauled by one, you're in a much tighter spot. Their claws and teeth make curse wounds, which magic has a really hard time healing. So you're badly injured and in a lot of pain, maybe looking at being disfigured and disabled for life if you survive long enough to heal naturally. And if you just let the curse join with your magic, the first thing you get is the improved healing. You'll probably come out of it with nothing worse than some cool scars.

"Over time, the more you embrace the curse the more it takes over your magic, chews up your soul, and bleeds into your physical appearance. The really far-gone ones can barely cast spells anymore, but are extremely powerful physically in their human forms and a huge threat in their wolf form."

I considered, "Remus seems like he's still a pretty powerful wizard, and looks human. We ran into a guy who was threatening him about 'family' that looked like a wolf in a human suit, though. What do I do if I run into one?"

"Don't they cover this in your school work?"

"Not really, just how to tell them apart from a regular wolf. The Ministry line is get away and don't risk letting them bite you. I think it said that silver doesn't do anything except allow the wounds to clot."

"I wonder if they tried _inherited_ silver," Bob mused. "I wouldn't risk it, though. Most of them, if you can use it to stop a normal wolf, you can use it on a werewolf. Normal wolves are scarier than people think, though. Like I said, though, the ones that have really embraced the curse might be even faster, stronger, and magic resistant. Maybe the Ministry line is right. If you don't know who you're dealing with, get away."

"Hmm, alright," I considered. "I guess I need to figure out how to bring it up to Remus so he'll stop pretending it's a big secret."

"Anything else?"

"Actually, yeah, let's talk about entropy curses…"


	17. Dark Room 3: Wolf Down

## When It Rains

A week later, I still hadn't found a good opportunity to confront Remus about his condition, partially owing to Ms. Dervish increasing my workload to make up for the time I'd been unable to help with the enchanting. I didn't mind, because I was getting to work on a variety of enchanting projects I couldn't afford on my own, and learning a lot. The shop did a lot of its business in repairing enchanted items, either ones bought for cheap and refurbished for sale or bespoke projects for wizards without the ability to fix up dangerously fraying charms on their heirlooms.

I'd been told a client was coming in with one of the latter projects, and assumed that was what my boss was haggling about in the front while I finished up a badly damaged sneakoscope. I had a hard time truly wrapping my head around how the device was supposed to detect untrustworthiness in the first place, but this one had been putting out a strong aura that made the owner _distrustful_. Paranoia in a glass top was probably not what anyone with good intentions wanted in their magic items. Despite all my protestations about how you couldn't _absolutely_ trust the runes because it was all a mental construct, it was usually a _consistent_ one. I'd been able to figure out where the spells were damaged by the runes that had their meanings flipped, and re-scribed and cast the correct intentions into just those and it seemed to be working much better.

Of course, the thing was spinning and faintly whistling to indicate a problem as Ms. Dervish asked me to come out front for a minute, which was a worry.

I trooped out into the small front of the shop with my shield bracelet inconspicuous but ready, and was only slightly surprised to see two platinum-haired individuals in the front, one much smaller and with much less of the distinctive hair. "Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Malfoy," I greeted the two, trying to figure out what they wanted. A breadbox-sized trunk of dark, polished wood was sitting on the counter that wasn't a normal fixture of the shop, so I assumed they'd brought it in.

"Mr. Dresden," they both acknowledged, almost synchronized. Young Draco at least seemed amused, though I thought his father, Lucius, had a very slight flicker of annoyance at either his son speaking over him or maybe that I wasn't suitably deferential with my greeting.

"Mr. Malfoy," my boss tilted her head at the senior, "has made an interesting proposal."

She probably would have gone on to explain in a moment, but Lucius took over. "It was an intriguing surprise when I came in to have some heirlooms repaired and discovered you were working here, Mr. Dresden. I saw an opportunity." He shifted his balance, calling attention to his fancy walking stick that I'd been assuming was a sword cane like he was some posturing nerd. Maybe the guy just had a bad leg and I was being uncharitable. "Draco tells me that you'd started including him in your 'enchanting club' recently, but he was a few months behind the other attendees?"

I shrugged, always annoyed at the way he asked questions just to give you a minute to participate in his script. So I took great delight in doing what little I could to derail it. "It's not really a _club_. I was just going to be doing some enchanting anyway, and invited some interested first-years to sit in and ask questions. I don't think Draco starting later puts him too far behind."

He gave me a faint smirk, as if he'd expected me to be difficult and was factoring that into how to handle me now that I'd done it on two meetings. I was going to have to figure out how to be even _more_ annoying. I probably shouldn't be so thrilled to try to piss off one of the most influential wizards in Britain, but the guy was pretty much a magical Nazi so I couldn't just let him get his way. "Be that as it may, I was personally glad to hear of Draco's interest. Ancient runes was one of my own favorite classes in school. Since you're already used to him sitting around and asking questions while you work, I thought we might continue that over the summer."

I shrugged, surprised that was all he wanted. I actually got along okay with the kid, and he'd been polite and attentive at my sessions, even after he lost his leverage about Hagrid's pet dragon and the Weasley twins had pulled a couple minor pranks on him. "You okay with this, Ms. Dervish?" I asked her.

She smiled, nodding. "Mr. Malfoy's paying a premium on the repairs to account for your attention being split."

"Fair enough, then," I agreed. I thought for a second about trying to gouge them for the three galleons a lesson I'd been charging Draco, but that would probably annoy my boss (even though she wasn't really paying me much more than that for a whole day of work). Maybe I could work it out with Draco later. "I'll be working on the heirlooms, then?"

Lucius nodded, reaching over and opening the chest to display a fairly haphazard stack of fancy-looking junk, full of dust and brass. "I've been doing a bit of an inventory of items in the manor recently, and we turned up several that were no longer functioning. What better way for Draco to learn than to understand the enchantments on the family heirlooms?"

Seeing another opportunity to annoy the elder Malfoy, I couldn't stop myself from asking, "None of them are cursed, right?"

"Certainly not," he insisted, but I thought I saw a flicker that he hadn't expected the question. Mr. Weasley had mentioned at the party that he'd been given the go ahead to start doing raids for dark items over the summer, and I wondered if that was what inspired the belated spring cleaning of Malfoy Manor.

"Sounds fun, then," I said. "When do we start?"

"Why don't you owl me your son's schedule and we'll work it out?" suggested Ms. Dervish.

"Quite," the elder Malfoy acknowledged. "Well then. Afternoon, Ms. Dervish, Mr. Dresden."

We said our own goodbyes as the Malfoys left the shop, and as they opened the door I could see that the day had gone from gray to drippy outside since I'd come into work. Once it was shut and they'd moved away, my boss lightly admonished me, "I'm surprised at you, lipping off to Lucius Malfoy. If you know his son…"

I grinned, "You can't let the stuffed shirts get too stuffed." Honestly, I wasn't sure how much of my attitude came from knowing my godmother was his sister in law and how much was general orneriness that I'd direct at him even if I didn't think I could get away with it. Especially after meeting his former boss/cult leader, Voldemort, I wasn't feeling like Lucius Malfoy deserved to be normalized.

After his recruiting pitch to me the previous November, I figured that even if he was no longer a Death Eater, he probably regretted it only because his "dark lord" hadn't been sufficiently subtle and had set back the cause of rabid conservatism quite a lot. While I didn't actually mind Draco hanging around, part of me was hoping to set a better example for the kid than his dad. I was probably fooling myself.

I was a little surprised, though, when I went back to the workroom and realized the sneakoscope was still quietly rotating, even long after the Malfoys had left. As far as I could tell, my repairs were good, but I didn't have a great way to test the range on the item and I had no idea what level of untrustworthiness it triggered off of. But I was still keyed up about it when I left for the day.

I decided to grab some bar food at the Three Broomsticks and then use their floo to get home, and immediately regretted it as I had to make a mad dash along the streets of Hogsmeade through the warm but reasonably heavy Scottish summer rain. Even though the sun set late, my visibility wasn't very good. So I didn't see the cloaked figure lurking in the alley I was passing until an arm was shooting out at me.

At least I'd been on guard enough to duck, but I slipped and tumbled beneath the grasping arm, sliding painfully into the road and having to look up at whoever had tried to grab me. Even in the rain, there was no mistaking the face that looked like a feral steroid-abuser. Fenrir Greyback grinned, showing way too many teeth, and said, "I thought I smelled you around town. You're going to send a message to Remus for me.

"Sorry, I mean you're going to _be_ a message for me."

## C-Beams Glitter in the Dark

The roided-up meatstick that I was pretty sure was one of those fully-curse-embraced werewolves Bob had mentioned loomed over me like Roy Batty, rain sheeting across his head that had slipped free of his cloak, and unironically growled, "Time to die!" I didn't think that meant he was planning to slump over dead himself. For one, I could see his hands and he hadn't mysteriously found a dove.

All the comparisons to _Blade Runner_ went through my head without _actually_ slowing my response time, because I'm a combat-trained geek who can multitask. He dived at me, clawlike fingernails out, and I rolled to the side, getting more mud into all of my clothes but successfully dodging the guy that was probably at least double my weight and twice as ugly.

I kicked at him, less to hurt him and more because it seemed like a faster way to shove myself away. He grunted, annoyed and toppled onto his right side, and I went sliding out into the main road. Success! "You'll pay for that!" he yelled, again seemingly totally unaware of what a walking talking cliche he was. I yanked my leg back to narrowly miss his grab.

"Do you accept muggle money? I'm low on galleons," I snarked. Make a cliched threat, get a cliched reply. Muddy, rain-slicked cobblestones were _not_ the best surface for a gangly teen to regain his footing on, and I was scrabbling to try to get to my feet before he got to his.

I'd just about gotten my oversized legs under me when he laid on his back and easily rolled to his feet. He was too burly to pull off that cool martial-artist kip-up thing, but it turns out that huge guys that are made of muscles _are_ way more agile than scrawny nerds like me like to give them credit for. My hands already stuck in a mud puddle trying to get purchase, I swept a spray of dirty water at him and managed to splash him in the face. He _roared_ in outrage.

The predicament I was in was that I'd deeply indoctrinated myself not to use magic outside of school, even in an emergency, for fear of Dawlish figuring out how to throw me back in Azkaban. In hindsight, it probably would have been a good risk vs. getting clawed up by a rabid werewolf, and I _might_ have been close enough to work that it would read as my enchanting exemption anyway. So, swallowing my sheer pigheadedness (which my housemates called "Gryffindor Pride") I shouted as loud as I could, "Aurors! AURORS!" as I managed to finally stagger to my feet and start moving to the side.

It was timely, as he snarled, "Shut your weakling face!" and took a diving swing at me. Some combination of my movement, the mud in his eyes, and fighting an urge to lead with his bite made it a narrow miss. I charged past him and down the street, feeling another whiff of air as he snatched for the back of my robe. His mistake: sodden and weighing a hundred useless pounds as it was, there wasn't enough sticking up to grab.

I heard him turn. Even with my long legs, I doubted I'd win any kind of footrace, and my lead was probably already dwindling to nothing. So I fished in my utility belt for a prize I'd hoped to hold onto for more than a couple weeks. Feeling the cool weight of a small glass globe in my hand, and sensing him right behind me ready to tackle, I dived right wincing as my knee caught the cobbles, waited for him to start trying to adjust to the dumb maneuver I'd just made, and said, "Hey, Fido, _catch_!" as I tossed the ball at his surprised face.

It actually hit him in the chest, which was just as well. Erumpent potion was optional extra credit on my potions OWL exam, and I'd saved off a little bit after turning it in. For the most part, the magical nitroglycerine was way more dangerous and less useful than a blasting curse or exploding charm, but when you couldn't use magic, it was a nice holdout. The small portion in the globe wasn't enough to even seriously injure him, but it definitely knocked him back against the wall of a nearby building and made a very loud noise.

I was hoping to use the distraction to get away, but as I shoved myself up off the wet road my knee groaned in protest. It was the same knee that I'd injured in my _last_ brawl over Christmas, and I was probably going to wind up doing myself serious long-term harm if I kept taking shots to it. As it was, I was only able to hobble away and I suddenly worried that this was just going to get me even more painfully murdered when he recovered in a moment.

But fortunately, speaking of the blasting curse, I heard a man's voice shout, " _Confringo_!" from down the block, and a jet of coruscating orange light flew at Greyback, who narrowly dodged out of the way as it scorched a foot-wide and yard-long crater into the house behind him. More shouts were coming from down the block, as people noticed him. Between me hobbling and soaked down the street to get away and him posed in anger in the street like the damned Terminator, the cavalry had made the right decision in the rain-obscured conditions.

"Just a matter of time, meat," he growled at me before dashing around a building, actually _howling_ out his rage as he escaped.

He got away so fast I'd even missed the opportunity to get in some ill-advised snark.

Adrenaline cutting out, I managed to get under the eaves of the building closest to me on my right and lean heavily against the wall. Just barely out of the rain, I winced as the pain in my knee made itself seriously known as well as all the other bruises from diving and rolling on cobblestones.

"I say, what's happened down… Dresden?" asked the voice that had cast the spell, resolving out of the rain into Abraham Grimblehawk, who I'd met the other night.

"Harry!" came a much more terrified shout, as a young girl ran up the road behind him. I saw a flash of coltish limbs and reddish-brown hair as his niece, Mathilda, crashed into me with a hug.

"Ouch! I'm okay, Mathilda. Just bruised from hitting the road too much," I said while awkwardly leaning on her since she'd thrown off my one-legged balance. "Fenrir Greyback wanted to kill me as a message to my guardian," I said to the senior Grimblehawk, hopefully conveying through my look that I understood what it meant, but wasn't planning to share with Mathilda if I didn't have to. "Really glad you were in the neighborhood."

"Yes, well. We were investigating something we _thought_ was unrelated. Why didn't you use magic on him?" the old man asked me.

"Probably should have," I realized out loud. "But I didn't want to get hauled in on underage magic charges by a certain auror who has it in for me."

He winced and glanced at his niece, probably realizing how dangerous things were because of the stupid underaged magic rule. "I'll speak for you if it's an issue," he allowed. "First rule against creatures like that is: survive."

The rain was finally starting to ease up, and a few other people from the Three Broomsticks Inn down the block were poking their heads out. Mr. Grimblehawk waved to indicate all was well. Mathilda hadn't let go from her hug, and it was a testament to how shaken up I was that I was just enjoying the human contact and not trying to extricate myself before she got ideas. Anyway, friends hugged, right? Just friends? "I'm glad you're okay, Harry."

"Me too," I told her, brain flashing to a million ways I could have prepared for the fight better, and handled myself. If he'd caught me truly alone, I'd have been dead. It then hit me that this was probably her internship, not dinner with her uncle. "Should _you_ be out here, helping hunt werewolves?" At least her internship probably let her get away with casting magic anywhere with her uncle's supervision.

"Not werewolves," she insisted. "Though people said so at first! But they've been seen in the area since the moon. Big wolves! What could they be? It's fascinating."

"Perhaps too fascinating," her uncle suddenly frowned, as if he'd noticed something we hadn't. Based on his look, I started to listen and thought I heard quiet splashes coming from several directions, as if big things were moving stealthily. "I had wondered why he howled as he left…"

From around the corners of buildings, dark-furred heads appeared, horse-sized wolves loping around and casually surrounding us. Red eyes gleamed in the clouded evening light as they got ready to charge.

## Call of the Wild

"Were you serious about speaking up?" I asked Mr. Grimblehawk. "Unless you've got this covered…" I didn't think he could handle upwards of a dozen giant wolves all by himself, but I wanted to be absolutely sure he would handle it if Dawlish came after me for using combat magic on the main street of Hogsmeade.

"Use what you've got, Dresden," he nodded, turning to face the ones on our right while I faced the ones on our left, bracketing Mathilda in between us. We were set up with our flank to the large storefront of Zonko's joke shop. Hopefully the Weasley twins wouldn't kill me if this got rough and the store was damaged. There wasn't any movement inside the shop, and a "closed" sign hopefully meant they were genuinely out and not just hiding. It probably also meant we couldn't easily escape inside.

I pushed myself away from the wall and drew my blasting rod. I tried to shake my shield bracelet free, but my sleeve was so wet I had to use my right hand to awkwardly pull it loose. My knee still ached and I was bruised all over, so hopefully this didn't turn into a running battle.

The wolves were fully visible as their numbers increased, red eyes almost glowing in the darkness. "Moon wolves?" Mathilda asked. "They can't be werewolves…"

"Wargs," her uncle explained. "Haven't been seen in Britain since the last goblin rebellion."

Great, more of my godmother's Nevernever acquisitions. This would be my third attack by faerie beasts in less than a year. "Mathilda," I whispered over my shoulder, "there are iron spikes in my back right belt pouch."

"Like the leucrotta?" she got it, remembering how I'd killed the beasts that had attacked the school over the winter holidays. As she moved my robe out of the way to get to the belt, one of the wargs took it as a cue to attack.

" _Incendio!_ " I incanted, pointing my blasting rod at the rushing wolf and catching it with a gout of flame. While it was soaked enough with rain that it didn't seem to do too much to it, with a yelp of surprise or pain it aborted the attack and dodged back out of the way.

Behind me, Mr. Grimblehawk shouted, " _Confringo!_ " and I caught the light of a more explosive torrent of fire at one that had tried to charge from his side. I didn't hear a yelp so it might have dodged. The rain was turning out to be fortunate enough: between the two of us, we could burn Hogsmeade down on a normal summer day.

I felt a bump from behind as Mathilda finally went for the utility belt, and a glance showed her left hand come out with a fistful of crude iron nails. "Now what? Banishing charm?" I nodded, and she shook a few of them free of the lump and into the air and yelled, " _Depulso!_ " to launch them at the wargs. It wasn't the most accurate way to do it, but what was effectively shrapnel flying through the air at least broke up the formation of wargs ahead of me.

Two launched themselves toward me this time, and I snapped off another cloud of fire before putting up my shield. One of them hit it full force, not quite knocking me out from the feedback but shattering the wall of solid magic from sheer impact mass. Unfortunately, the second one was right behind.

" _Immobulus!_ " Mathilda cast, and, wonder of wonders, these things weren't magic resistant. The temporarily-petrified wolf collapsed just short of me, nearly landing on the staggered one that had bounced off of my shield. From much closer and using the whole handful of iron spikes this time, she said, " _Depulso!_ " and sent a cloud of iron into the two creatures, who whimpered and then went still.

Behind, Mr. Grimblehawk yelled, " _Incarcerous! Incarcerous!_ " At a glance, he'd been rushed simultaneously from his side and conjured ropes to try to bind his attackers. Unfortunately, the main street was wide, and a third warg had circled around and rushed straight up the middle. I don't know if it was coming after me or for Mathilda, but since she'd stepped around my right side to hit our attackers, she was in the way of the rush.

With a cry of pain, my friend was tackled to the ground, a slavering giant wolf trying to decide whether to finish her off or to deal with me first. I didn't give it the option. In addition to being a useful magical focus, my blasting rod is a couple feet of quite-solid wood, and I guess it didn't expect me to backhand swing at its face. Its reflexes were good, though, and I just clipped it in the ear. But hitting it would have been a bonus, I was just trying to line up a close shot.

" _Bombarda!_ "

The exploding charm isn't usually the best choice in combat. It takes a lot of energy to cast, and is optimized for brittle materials like stone rather than flexible living flesh. At ten paces, you can take the floor right out from under someone, but their legs will be fine. At ten inches, though, flexibility doesn't mean much. With a wet sound like someone playing a trumpet into a jar of mayonnaise, the warg's head disappeared and the body flipped through the air to land in the middle of the street.

Five of their pack down in as many seconds, three of them with great prejudice, the rest of the wargs growled and then ran off. "That's three and done!" I shouted after them, hoping I'd had my share of Nevernever attacks for a while. "You okay?" I asked, looking down at Mathilda and offering a hand.

She gingerly felt her head and winced, but I didn't see any blood when she then reached up and grabbed my hand. "Three vials of pain potion, maybe," she grimaced. "Okay, Uncle Abraham?" she asked.

The old man seemed winded. "Too much magic at once," he admitted. "Glad you're both okay." He took another look and suggested, "Cleaning charms before the stains set in, maybe?" and then went to go check on the two he'd tied up.

Mathilda was wearing a similar red jacket to her uncle's, so I hadn't noticed immediately that she was pretty thoroughly doused from the neck down in warg blood. "Sorry," I said, "I didn't really think about proximity." Note to self, try not to explode evil wolves at point blank range. Fluid physics are unpredictable.

"No worries," she grinned, a little weakly. "You can explode wolves that are about to kill me any time." Not sure if she wanted to say more, she just shook her head and started using cleaning charms to try to get the blood off.

I watched her as I leaned back against the building, my own second adrenaline crash in the last ten minutes making me aware of what she was feeling. "You did good," I told her, as I saw her glance at the body of the warg that had gotten her.

"Did I?" she frowned. "Uncle's knowledge. Your plan. Your iron. I'm the only one that got hurt…"

"You immobilized the one that would have gotten me. You got two of them. I didn't see the one that got you, either, and if you hadn't been here it would have gotten me." I absently stowed my blasting rod back onto my belt.

"But the two of you! Fire! Explosions!" she shook her head. "I'm nowhere near that. And if you hadn't told me what to do, I'd have frozen up! I could have died!"

I wasn't exactly the most touchy-feely person in the world, but even I could tell that the situation demanded it and reached out and pulled her into a hug. She was trembling. "Hey. You did good. It's not bad that you're not ready for those situations. You haven't needed to be. It's weird that I have. And you didn't freeze up, even though most people would have. You did good."

Fortunately, it seemed like she was pulling herself back together a minute later when several pops heralded apparitions into the street. "I've got you now, Dresden!" Dawlish snarled, his wand already out and leveled. The other aurors, thinking they were dropping into a dark wizard attack, quickly took stock of the situation and put their own wands away.

"Could have used you ten minutes ago, man," I told him. Keeping my hands carefully still and visible, I nodded north, "Fenrir Greyback ran off that way," then I nodded east, "and I think the rest of the wargs ran off that way."

He snorted and continued to keep his wand pointed at my face, "With the magic you were setting off, it doesn't matter if you swear You-Know-Who himself ran off that way. You're mine."

"Auror Dawlish!" Mr. Grimblehawk shouted from further down the street where he'd been trying to coax people out of the inn to help with the warg bodies. "I deputized Mr. Dresden. He helped with a dangerous attack by rogue magical creatures! Now either help here or go after Greyback!"

Distracted by the shout, Dawlish couldn't help but actually notice the dead and incapacitated wargs. The look of frustration on his face set off Mathilda laughing at the absurdity of it. Which got me laughing. Which actually got a couple of the aurors laughing as Dawlish went increasingly red.

Clearly wanting to just hex me anyway, he put his wand away and choked out, "Someday, Dresden. Someday."

## Heart and Soul

I _had_ eventually gotten my dinner at the Three Broomsticks, as I sat with the Grimblehawks and an auror named Savage getting debriefed. Not wanting to out Remus, when the auror asked why Greyback had targeted me, I suggested it was maybe because I'd fought off the shade of Voldemort twice now. Not that he believed me, but he ended the interview shortly after that to "do more research." Once Mathilda had finally relaxed from her very trying day, she was nice enough to do some drying and cleaning charms on me (making me consider that maybe I should have gone out for an internship where I got to use magic _everywhere_ all summer).

I'd opted not to call Madam Pomfrey down from the school, and just accepted a bit of first aid. I knew if she got involved, so would Dumbledore, and I wanted to talk to Remus before the headmaster. I was regretting it when I stiffly stumbled out of the fire into Remus' house, feeling the twinge in my knee in particular. Remus wasn't in the den, so I went into the kitchen and got a Coke and a couple aspirin.

From there, I heard the TV and limped toward the living room. Remus had cleverly laid a line of subtle runework to leave a space along the side of the living room that was the outer wall at the front of the house, and kept his TV, phone, and fax machine set up entirely on the outer side of the line. The runes were a variation on dueling wards, and tried to ground and redirect stray magic. They were perfect for keeping electronics functioning in a magical household. The rest of the room was also fairly modern, with a few couches and end tables. It was where Remus had his muggle guests, like his agent.

The big-screen TV was showing some show about hang gliders that Remus seemed to be half-watching while also reading a book. "Evening Harry," he said, absently, then I saw him sniff, and turn to give me his full attention, clicking off the TV. "What happened?"

I guessed cleaning charms weren't up to hiding the exciting smells of battle from a werewolf's nose. "Greyback," I told him, flopping with great relief into one of the couches and putting my injured leg up. "Wanted to kill me to send a message to you."

"Oh no! Harry, I am so sorry!" he clenched his hands around his book. "You should never have been involved in this. Is he…?"

"Driven off, with a little help from Mr. Grimblehawk. Might have been able to track him, but he also called in a bunch of wargs that had set up in the area to cover his escape."

"Wargs? There haven't been…"

"I know," I sighed, "That's part of the magical beasts crisis that's keeping them from having time to be on your case."

He suddenly had a defensive look, and tried, "On my case?"

"I know you're a werewolf, Remus," I said, not having the patience for subtlety. "I figured it out for sure a week ago."

He was now going pale, his facial scratches standing out in the bright electrical lighting that his anti-magic wards allowed. "And how do you feel about that?"

"It's fine, man," I told him, "You're going to tear up your book." He unclenched slightly, but still gave me a wary look, so I explained, "I figure if Greyback thinks he can piss you off by killing someone for all he knows you barely know, you must not be anywhere near as far gone as he is."

He tried to relax, seeing that I was calm, but admitted, "While I appreciate that vote of confidence, he probably doesn't see it that way. He just thinks you're mine, and thus killing you is claiming territory."

I hadn't really considered that, so asked, "And _would_ you feel that way?"

He shook his head ruefully, "I hope I'd be shocked because he'd hurt someone who didn't deserve it, whether or not I knew you. While you're a good kid, you're _not_ part of my pack. No one has been for years, not since the war."

I made a leap, and asked, "The kids in your books? You're clearly the wolf magimal, and there's a dog, a stag, and a rat…"

"Yes, they're largely autobiographical; my way of working through the pain of losing my friends. I didn't expect that anyone would be interested, but my creative writing professor suggested I shop them around to agents, and here I am."

"How'd you wind up going to college for writing anyway? It's not exactly a wizarding profession," I asked, because I'd been wondering about that almost as much as the werewolf thing.

"More tragedy, I'm afraid," he frowned. "I was a secondary beneficiary for the Potters, in case the worst happened and their son didn't make it. It was more money than I'd ever seen before, and I was just going to donate it in my grief, since I didn't deserve it. But Frank and Alice talked me out of it, and into using it to get the advanced education I wouldn't be able to afford as a werewolf. I went muggle because I was so exhausted with the wizarding world. No one was as surprised as me that I had a talent for writing."

"Doesn't hurt that you have the perfect pen name already."

He chuckled. "Dumbledore's fault. My father didn't want anyone to know that his family had a werewolf in it. So the headmaster suggested I attend school under an assumed name. The old man didn't tell me what it meant. I was really angry once I started learning Roman history and Latin. I guess, since my father's dead, I could go back, but I feel like Remus Lupin _is_ my name at this point."

"Wait," I did the math, "so you were already cursed when you were 11?"

"Before I was five," he frowned. "Greyback didn't like the anti-werewolf legislation my father was proposing. His method of _sending messages_ hasn't changed much in the last thirty years."

"Stars and stones, Remus!" I nearly shouted. "You've been cursed for 30 years and you still have all your magic? You must be _nothing like_ Greyback."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I have a dark voice inside me all the time saying that we're _just alike_. It would be so easy to just give in, stop fighting it, and let it consume me like it has him. It's easy to agree with those that call me a monster, because I feel like one every day."

"Can you make a patronus?" I asked, a bit of a non-sequitur.

He nodded, but admitted, "A wolf."

I grinned at the irony, but continued, "And you know why dark wizards can't make one?"

"It's generally assumed that they have a hard time thinking of a truly happy thought. Some days I do too."

"Nope," I shook my head. "I was having the same problem, before we started doing research. Happiness is just the spark for the magic, but it comes from your soul. I was so worried that my soul was too damaged to make one. After what happened with my mentor, I felt like a monster some days too. Dark wizards tear their souls up, and that's why they can't do soul magic like the patronus, even if they're very happy. If you'd even begun to let the curse win, you probably wouldn't be able to produce one.

"The _monster_ is the curse that's trying to eat your magic and your soul. _You're_ a good man."

His eyes glistened and he didn't say anything for a minute, before he choked out, "Thanks, Harry. That means a lot."

I nodded, then went on, "So now let's talk about how to deal with the _Greyback_ problem…"


	18. Dark Room 4: School Return

## Good Girls

Slightly disappointingly, Greyback seemed to be wary of the wanted posters that had gone up for him in Hogsmeade, and didn't show his face again to let us put our planning into motion. The Grangers and Creeveys also didn't think they'd seen anything of him. He'd even remained quiet through the August full moon, which was a great surprise to Remus.

Other than being keyed up waiting for an ornery werewolf to make another hit at me, the next month went by calmly. Draco Malfoy _did_ show up for quite a few of my work sessions and politely observed my repairs on his family heirlooms. I saw Percy and Penny a few more times in Manchester, had a few lunches with Mathilda, and even saw the entire Weasley clan plus assorted nearly-second-years when I made a token appearance at Neville Longbottom's birthday party at the end of July. The only friend I didn't see was Oliver Wood, who was at a quidditch camp for most of the summer.

Wrapped up in work and the summer assignments that had shown up for my upcoming classes, the holiday flew by. I felt like I was forgetting something, and finally got a phone call reminding me on August 14th. "Harry, can you come out and help me with my practical study this weekend?" Hermione asked me.

"Oh! Yeah, sure, what time?"

"If you come by on Sunday, Penny could ride the train down with you," she suggested. Before I could object, she explained, "I may have hinted about how we could practice without the underaged magic office knowing…"

"If she narcs on us, it's on your head Hermione," I chastised the 12-year-old. Penny wasn't as much of a rules-follower as Percy, but she was still a prefect. And also Percy's girlfriend. Her finding out I could avoid the Trace could be risky.

"Okay," the girl accepted. "See you Sunday?"

Two days later I flooed into the Leaky Cauldron and found Penny waiting by herself at a table, immediately obvious from her long, curly blond hair. "Hey, Penny," I greeted her. "You're pretty far out without the parents."

She smiled, "Dad wanted to drive me all the way, but mum put her foot down. Four hours in the car or thirty seconds in the floo then an hour on the train. They dropped me at the coat shop with a very stern admonishment to be on my best behavior."

"Well, glad to see that there _is_ a rational limit to overparenting. Speaking of the train, shall we?"

We walked over to the nearby Underground stop, planning to switch to a train at Victoria station. The route wasn't that different from the way I'd taken during my trip out of school over the winter break, but starting from the Leaky Cauldron instead of west London. Just two and a half more months until I could apparate, and it couldn't come soon enough.

"So what's up with the visit?" I asked, once we were underway. "Didn't know you and Hermione were doing the sleepover thing."

She shrugged, "I'd been mentoring her a little over the phone, and the Grangers offered to chaperone for a trip to Diagon Alley for school supplies. My parents don't really like it in general, and Percy wanted me to go on the big Weasley trip on Wednesday, and there's no way they could get off work then."

"So, four days with the Grangers, huh?" I smirked. "Just kidding, they're great."

"It will be nice to get out of the house," she smiled, looking out the window as we rolled into a subway station. "Percy and you visiting has been nice, but otherwise I've been pretty cooped up. I don't know if my parents are going to be ready for me to be an adult next summer."

"Just tell them they got to put it off for a year. If you hadn't gone to Hogwarts, they'd have had to deal with you getting a driver's license already."

"Doubt it," she chuckled. "My mum didn't learn to drive until she was 21."

"Oh, yeah, tough crowd. Here's where we switch."

We got off the subway and onto the train out of town without too much hassle. Once we were underway and I thought Penny was engrossed in watching the city go by, she surprised me by asking, "So what's the deal with Hermione wanting to do practical work?"

I asked her the questions I'd been preparing for the last couple of days, "Depends. Are you Penelope the prefect right now? And how much do you share with Percy?"

"Not something the professors would approve of, huh?" she asked, turning from the window to look me in the eyes. I gave a small smirk and she thought about it for a moment before admitting, "I guess if _Hermione Granger_ thinks it's an acceptable risk, I can let it go. Percy may find out _eventually_ , but I can sit on it."

"It won't actually matter for us for much longer," I nodded. "But it could make a big difference to Hermione for the next few years." Checking that nobody else on the train was paying us any attention, I passed her a copy of the Trace-cloaking ritual. "I got that so I could get around without Dawlish chasing after me."

One of the only other kids in my year that could probably make sense of the ritual, she eventually asked, "It uses a voodoo doll?"

"The term of art is 'poppet' I think," I shrugged. "It's not dark, and it's not _quite_ blood magic, but if it's _legal_ it's only because the Ministry doesn't know about it."

"Yeah. Wouldn't want muggleborn students to be able to practice and defend themselves over the summer."

"Why Miss Clearwater, was that _sarcasm_? About the _rules_?"

She stuck her tongue out and poked me. "Why _Mister Dresden_ , do you have me confused with Hermione Granger or Percival Weasley? Just because I'm the _most responsible_ girl in my year for my house, that doesn't make me a prig."

"Did you just imply your boyfriend and your hostess this week are prigs?" I grinned. "I thought you were a _good girl_."

"I am so hexing you after we cast this ritual, Harry."

That turned out to be just after a nice lunch catching up with the Grangers, but Hermione got to go first. Another side benefit of my summer job was that I'd been able to lay in a good stock of the components for the ritual. The only difficulty was Hermione being able to get her poppet hung around my neck, since I had nearly two feet of height on her. Through well-timed ducking, we got it done, and the ritual competed, her Trace bound into the Hermione doll hung around my neck.

"This feels weird," Hermione mused, standing in her fenced-in backyard with her parents, Penny, and me looking on.

"Like you're wrapped in a scratchy blanket?" I asked. She nodded, and I said, "That's what it's supposed to do. You'll be down a little bit of power as well."

"Why don't we do a review of your charms and transfigurations from last year, so your parents can see," suggested Penny. "And if you need a target, you can use Harry."

"Uh-uh," I grinned. "Cast on me and it might upset the ritual, since I'm wearing your poppet. You'll have to use Penny."

"Seriously, you two," the 12-year-old scoffed. "Hardly anything from the first-year curriculum even targets other people. I _have_ been reading ahead, though…"

We got quite a ways into the second-year curriculum before the ritual finally overloaded. I felt the poppet snap free from my neck and burn up before it hit the ground while Hermione blinked and staggered a bit, unprepared for the rest of her magic to snap back to her.

"I guess that's it?" she asked.

I nodded, and her father smiled, "That was great, Hermione! I'm so glad we finally got to see you do magic. Are you staying for dinner, Harry?"

I did, but then had to head out to catch the train back and get to work in the morning. I left Penny and Hermione a stock of ritual components and a copy of the ritual to practice with the rest of the week. "I'll see you all at Diagon Alley on Wednesday, I told them. Should be a lot of fun, since Penny gets to meet Percy's parents…"

"Wait. What?" Penny gasped realizing, as I laughed and headed off to the bus stop.

## Dweomer Rights Management

I'd wound up working the full day on Tuesday to get the time off on Wednesday to go shopping, and hurried up to the school to meet McGonagall to see what supplies I could get on scholarship instead of buying at the alley. "I'm afraid this may be an undertaking, Mr. Dresden," she explained as we walked toward the library. "Irma—Madam Pince—is still out at her librarian's conference and I'm not entirely sure how she's organized the secondhand books."

"Librarian con, huh? I bet those are _way_ wilder than you'd think," I grinned. I honestly wouldn't put it past her, knowing the librarian's penchant for racy romance novels.

"And yet, still very quiet," McGonagall deadpanned and I barked out a laugh at her joke. I wondered how many other students appreciated how funny she was. We pushed into a small side-room off the library that was crammed with books of all shapes and sizes, but which seemed to feature collected stacks of books with identical spines. "Ah, here we are. Let's not upset anything we don't have to, lest we suffer when she returns. Here's the book list." She handed me the list and then lit on a stack of books with very ragged spines, "And I think _this_ is our luck for your potions text."

I took the well-used book she passed me after the book list, and I flipped through it. It had been so heavily annotated it was sometimes difficult to see the actual printed text, but the handwritten instructions seemed like reasonable class notes at a glance, so I didn't try for one of the other decrepit copies. With that one out of the way, we were also able to find a couple of the other texts before I finally read the last section. "Seriously? He put every one of his novels on the list?" I winced, looking at the seven books listed for defense class.

"For _every year_ ," she agreed. "Albus wasn't pleased either, but the final decision on his professorship was so late, and we were unable to make time to discuss it with him due to his book tour. Traditionally professors _do_ get to choose their texts, but none have ever stretched the precedent this far. We'll just have to make due."

"I mean, I've already read them, so it's not _that_ big of a deal, but I'm not sure they're effective teaching aids for first-years, much less a NEWT-level class." I thought about the library copies that I'd read and asked, "Professor, how do you feel about _copyright_?"

McGonagall deliberately turned a blind eye to my shenanigans, but gave no explicit sponsorship of my plan other than confirming that the Trace couldn't detect me inside the school's wards even though it was the summer. So I was able to use the doubling charm to knock off a couple dozen sets of Lockhart's books before she suggested it was time for me to go home.

The books I'd copied for Christmas presents for my friends were stable, since I'd invested them with actual parchment and ink as well as mild preservative enchantments in the covers. _These_ were raw conjuration copies that would eventually evaporate on their own. But I put enough effort into them that they'd probably last the school year, if no one hit them with a counterspell.

The interesting thing to me was just how few of the mass-produced books in the wizarding world had enchantments to protect them from duplication spells. Most of the handwritten books at Hogwarts were heavily locked down, but only a few of the printed ones seemed to be. Maybe it wasn't worth the effort at that scale: like bootleg cassettes, home duplication was small fry and major operations would be able to break your protections anyway. I still wondered what the actual laws were. It would be really embarrassing if Dawlish managed to get me for book piracy.

So when I met up with the Weasleys at Diagon Alley in the morning, I nodded to the twins to hang out with me while the rest of the family went down to their Gringotts vault. Handing over a box containing the spell-shrunken books, I told them, "Copies of the defense books for this year. McGonagall's ignoring it because she doesn't think it's fair to make everyone buy so many."

Fred and George both grinned, and Fred whispered, "Harry… can you teach _us_ the doubling charm?"

George sighed, "Oh the things we'd be able to do."

I realized I was probably going to regret it, but I told them, "I will if you can get these to people that can't afford the books without overcharging them. And leave my name out of it."

By the time the rest of the family had made it up, the twins had come up with some reasonably satisfying explanation for why their mom didn't need to buy those books for them or Ron (Percy and Ginny weren't yet trusted to keep their mouths shut), and the Grangers had shown up with Penny which was a distraction in and of itself. The parents insisted everyone split up and go shopping, and meet back up at the bookstore around noon.

I'd broken off to go shopping with Penny and Percy, resigned to being a third wheel, when suddenly our trio became a quartet with great squealing as Mathilda raced out of the pet store to hug Penny, who she hadn't seen all summer. "It's so good to see you!" they both exclaimed, basically simultaneously.

"Thanks for inviting me!" Mathilda told her.

"Of course," Penny insisted. "I'm glad Percy let me borrow Hermes to mention it."

"We should really get owls for all of the muggleborn," suggested Percy. "It makes no sense that so many are reliant on waiting to receive letters from others to communicate over the summer."

"Or we could hook all the wizarding houses up to the telephone system," I told him. "It's older than the Hogwarts Express, so ought to fit in. Hey, 'Thilda." I nodded to my friend and would-be girlfriend.

"Hey Harry, hey Perce," she said, suddenly a little shy and absently pushing her hair behind her ear. "Did Penny tell you I was coming? Is it okay if I hang out?" She exchanged a mysterious look with Penny.

"Sure. Why wouldn't it be?" I asked, sharing a look with Percy to work out that neither of us knew what the girls were up to.

"Great!" smiled Penny. "Let's finish up here, and then ice cream!"

We'd finished our sundaes before I realized Penny had quietly dealt with me being a third wheel by setting up a double date.

"I wonder what the Malfoys were doing down in Knockturn Alley," Percy mused, disrupting my train of thought, gesturing from our table outside the ice cream parlor to the entrance to the lower-rent section of this wizarding shopping mall. Sure enough, Draco and his father were heading out into the main alley, the elder's cane tapping along on the cobblestones.

"They saw you pointing," I told Percy. "And they're coming over."

"Merlin," mumbled Percy. "Apologies all. But might as well be nice."

We all took Percy's lead and stood, giving little greeting bows to the two men that they returned with almost-respectful head nods. Draco raised an eyebrow at me bowing and I smirked back at him when his father wasn't looking.

Mr. Malfoy took up a relaxed stance, hands planted on his cane, and seemed to be fully briefed on everyone, "Mr. Weasley, Mr. Dresden, Miss Grimblehawk, yes? Abraham's niece?" she nodded and he added, "And Miss Clearwater, of Ravenclaw, I believe?" When Penny agreed as well, he smiled, "Draco has mentioned your help with his enchanting studies."

When Penny just gave a demure, "It's been my pleasure," I glanced around at my companions, surprised. Between Mathilda and Percy's inclination to defer to the more influential pureblood and what I figured had to be Penny's inferiority complex at being a muggleborn out of her depth, this was not exactly the train wreck I'd expected. I was honestly a little disappointed that they hadn't already left, offended. And then I realized I was being similarly deferential: even knowing what I knew about the man's odious political views, at some point I'd decided it was easier for me to avoid making him an enemy.

A little insubordinate urge bubbled up from my self-disgust and took control of my mouth. "Yeah, Penelope basically runs the enchanting study group at school. She's one of the best students in our year. It's interesting how many of the top students at Hogwarts are muggleborn."

Malfoy simply turned his cool gray eyes on me and quirked a half-smile, then turned back to Penny, "Excellent. I'm so glad to hear it when students work hard to excel. If you need any help with your career prospects, please do write to me, Miss Clearwater." He regarded the rest of us, "The offer, of course, extends to Draco's Gryffindor friends as well, if any of you haven't already sought out alternate patronage." He glanced down at a pocket watch, "Oh, well, we must be off if we want to greet Mr. Lockhart before his signing, it was a pleasure."

Draco said, "See you all at school," and followed his father, shooting me a smirk. I sighed and nodded back to him, ceding the point.

"Well… that was awkward and unexpected," Percy said, after they were out of earshot.

"Did we just unravel in the face of the enemy?" Mathilda asked.

"It's not our fault," I grinned. "They pulled a mind-scramble on us. They opened their eyes and talked." Penny and Percy both looked blankly at the two of us sharing a laugh. "C'mon, Penny. I know Percy wouldn't have seen _Lost Boys_ , but…"

"No horror movies allowed at my house," she shrugged. "It's cute the way you two finish each others' pop culture references, though."

"I guess we should also get moving and meet everyone else," Percy suggested, nodding at the line that was already forming down the street at the bookstore. The rest of the redheads from his family were clearly visible in the queue.

We cut into the line with the Weasleys and Grangers just as they were moving into Flourish and Blotts, and being, as usual, head and shoulders above anyone else in the crowd I was able to see the front of the line up ahead. The Malfoys were gladhanding with a man who I recognized as Gilderoy Lockhart from his "about the author" photos in his books.

The well-coiffed blond-haired man had on blue robes that seemed to exactly match his eyes. If the Death Eaters were more into the Aryan thing, I'd assume that Lockhart's coloration added to his friendliness with Mr. Malfoy was a clue that we'd have another suspect defense teacher. Fortunately, he had rolled up his sleeves to sign autographs in the August heat, and was mercifully free of magical tattoos. Of course, Quirrell had been, too. Lucius Malfoy, on the other hand, had always worn long sleeves every time I'd met him, no matter the outside temperature.

"I can't believe we're going to actually meet Gilderoy Lockhart," Hermione bubbled behind me in the line. "He's written practically the whole booklist!"

"That's because he's teaching the class, Hermione," I mentioned then immediately regretted as she started making an excited noise that had me wincing and must have alerted all the dogs in the alley. It was a good thing Remus hadn't accompanied us.

"I'm excited that you're going to get to study with a wizard of his _caliber_ ," Mrs. Weasley added, putting a little breathiness on the last word that had her husband quirking an eyebrow.

I wasn't so sure about that. I had the opportunity to observe Lockhart and the store patrons as we were stuck in the slow-moving line. I wasn't exactly the most combat-trained individual on the planet, and certainly didn't have the wariness of someone like Auror Moody, but I'd been in more fights than most 16-year-olds and liked to consider myself situationally aware. And I could get a vague sense of others who were used to fights and never totally let down their guard. Mr. Malfoy and the elder Weasleys were aware of their surroundings at all times. The doctors Granger were not. Most of the kids were not, except for Ron and Hermione, who had already seen way more fights than any 12-year-old should and were starting to develop an eye for threats.

While I'd held out hope that maybe I was wrong about Gilderoy Lockhart just being a novelist, I was starting to get worried. He seemed utterly unaware of anyone other than himself and _maybe_ the person he was talking to. I saw him flinch in surprise a couple of times as the event photographer set off the flash for a candid shot. This did not seem like the behavior of anyone who'd been in even a fraction of the fights he described in his books, even if they'd been greatly embellished for print.

I actually grabbed a copy of the book he was promoting, and was surprised that _Magical Me_ was his autobiography. Given that his books were presumably autobiographical, I had a hard time figuring out how a 28-year-old had enough additional material about his life to fill another book. Maybe it would read like a novel in an entirely different genre. But at least I had something for him to sign when I got to the front of the line.

"Harry Dresden, I'm a big fan," I told him, not dishonestly. As he started to personalize the book, I mentioned, "I'll be in your sixth-year NEWT class this year." After a pause to make sure he'd registered that rather than ignoring me, I said, "I'm hoping we'll get to duel with you. It would be great to have some one-on-one instruction from a master."

I thought I saw a flicker of worry as he finally glanced up after signing with a flourish and registered my height. "Ah yes, indeed, Harry," he recovered, having to glance at the book he'd just signed to remember my name. He stood and, raising his voice and waving his arms for quiet explained, "As this… towering… young man has mentioned, and to keep the rumors from getting ahead of the official word, I would like to make an announcement.

"All the young wizards and witches of Hogwarts that came into the store today simply to get a copy of my new biography, _Magical Me_ , will also soon be getting the real magical me! Yes, I have great pleasure in announcing that I will, this September, be taking up the professorship for Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

As the clapping and cheering rolled throughout the store, I was quickly moved to the side by one of his handlers so I wouldn't get in the way of the man's photographs. It took me a few minutes to extract myself from the crush and grab the other books I needed, and as I pushed outside the store I stumbled into the middle of a confrontation between Mr. Weasley and Mr. Malfoy.

Malfoy was holding up a second hand school book with a deteriorating cover and explaining, "...was between your son and myself, regarding his role in my own son's education, looking at this perhaps I _should_ be offering your family handouts, Weasley." He dismissively shoved the book back into the cauldron Ginny was using to carry her school supplies. "It seems if you sink any further, I'll be supplying for your children from my charities _anyway_."

And that was enough to have Arthur Weasley take a swing at Lucius Malfoy, and the two of them quickly devolved into an untrained fistfight that would only be more embarrassing if they started pulling each others' hair. I was about to do something since everyone else seemed content to watch, but Hagrid, who had been in the area used his own superior height to see something was wrong and wade through the crowd to break it up.

While Hagrid and Mrs. Weasley chastised Mr. Weasley after the Malfoys walked off, Lucius covering a black eye, I walked up to Percy and Penny and asked, "What was _that_ about?"

Percy passed me a small stack of books, and it looked like a similar collection was in both his and Penny's arms with their other purchases. "Mr. Malfoy presented us some new editions of books on runes and enchanting that he hopes that we use in the seminars this year, to make sure Draco is prepared for classes next year. Father did not take well to what looked like some form of handout or bribery."

I shrugged, knowing that the Weasleys were weird about anything that looked like accepting gifts they hadn't earned. I half-wondered if the family hadn't gotten on the wrong end of a fae bargain at some point in their ancestry and made sure that would never happen again. "Giving us some free books is kind of the least he could do. Look on the bright side, though."

"What bright side?" he asked.

"Your parents are definitely going to be too guilty about that to be able to be all parental about meeting your girlfriend."

That got a rueful laugh from Percy and a sigh of relief from Penny.

## Track Suits

Two weeks later, the summer was gone and it was back to Hogwarts. The arbitrary date of going back to school was on a Tuesday, and I still couldn't figure out why they wouldn't just make it something like the first Sunday in September rather than always the first, no matter what day of the week it fell on. It had at least given me a few extra days to myself, since I finished up my work at Dervish and Banges the previous Friday.

My main personal enchanting project for the summer had been figuring out how to add a bunch of bells and whistles to my school trunk. The battered old exterior was now pretty much just camouflage over the completely refurbished interior. I had way more space than it looked like, including a hidden compartment for Bob. I had security and durability enhancement. I had weight reduction. About the only thing I hadn't figured out was how to have it be able to swap between multiple interior spaces.

I'd also forgotten wheels, I realized, when I finally needed to drag it through Remus' floo onto Platform 9 ¾. Even magically lightened, it was still bulky. My temporary guardian gamely helped me carry it onto the train, where I staked out a set of compartments toward the front. "Thanks for having me this summer, Remus," I told him as I stowed it in a luggage rack.

"It was no trouble at all," he nodded, shaking my hand. "You're more than welcome to stay over the winter holidays if you need to as well. But we can talk about that more when I'm visiting the castle." He nodded and headed off, and I saw him get intercepted by the Longbottoms for a conversation as he was on the way back to the floo.

"Who was that?" Oliver Wood asked as he bustled into the compartment, stowing his own trunk next to mine.

"Remus Lupin," I told my quidditch-obsessed roommate. "War hero turned muggle novelist. Dumbledore talked him into letting me stay with him for the summer."

"Oh, good! I guess from the fact you're still talkin' t'each other, he didn't keep you cooped up the whole time?"

"No, it was honestly pretty great. Got to go out a fair amount when I wasn't working. How was your summer?" I asked.

"Wall-to-wall quidditch, as you might expect," he grinned. "Hopefully Alexis still wants t'see me this year, since I didna have much time to write her, and didna see her at all."

"Ouch," I winced. "Good luck, man. I had to talk Percy out of trying that with Penny. It was only two months, though, so hopefully it's okay."

I saw a pair of people with extremely colorful clothes and an immense amount of almost-white hair walking by the compartment and I stuck my head out, "Hey, Luna." Seeing I had her and what I guessed was her father's attention, I suggested, "The Weasleys always get here at the last second. Do you want to wait with us until you and Ginny can find a spot?"

She smiled brightly, "Yes, thank you very much Harry." She moved in so her father could help us put the trunk in the rack. "Daddy, this is Harry Dresden, a friend of Ginny's brothers. And…"

"Oliver Wood," the Scottish boy introduced himself. "Their friend and roommate."

"Ah, yes!" her father beamed at me in a slightly unsettling manner. "You're the one that theorized that nargles might be air-based sprites. Quite possible! Insightful. Glad to meet you. I'm Xenophilius Lovegood, Luna's father." We shook hands, and his eyes were suddenly drawn to my chest where I had my mother's silver amulet hanging prominently outside of my t-shirt. "And a seeker! Marvelous." He drew a similar amulet out from beneath his own rainbow-colored embroidered shirt.

"Harry's not a seeker," Oliver grumbled. "Won't even get on a broom."

"Ah, I mean a seeker on the Quest!" I could almost feel Mr. Lovegood dropping in the capital letter. "Those who search for the Deathly Hallows."

I shook my head slightly and explained, "It was my mother's, and she might have been. I'm just familiar with the idea. I see it as a symbol of magic itself: power, knowledge, and defense, all in the service of life."

The strange man's eyes, slightly out of sync with each other, hooded for a moment as he thought, and then he nodded. "An excellent idea. I like it! Though, do be cautious about whom you show it to. I have been accosted in the past by those who do not understand the Quest, and merely see it as a symbol used by the most famous seeker of recent years, Grindelwald."

"Thanks for the warning," I told him.

"Well, I must be off. Got a line on a Blibbering Humdinger that I've been waiting for Luna to go to school to follow up on! Good to meet you Mr. Dresden. Mr. Wood. I shall definitely be sending you a subscription to my magazine, Mr. Dresden. And please write me if you wish to discuss the Quest!"

With that he was off, and Luna sat off in the corner, looking out the window. I mentioned to Oliver, "Speaking of seekers, though, you should try out Ginny Weasley. Apparently she's good."

He nodded. "Fred and George mentioned it. Hasna been a first-year as a seeker in ages, but it's worth a shot. Katie's still down about not catchin' the snitch 't'all last year, and I'd much rather play her as a chaser."

Soon after, the compartment door opened to another blonde witch, and Oliver and I helped Penny get her trunk up onto the rapidly filling racks. "This is Luna Lovegood," I told her, off the questioning glance about why we had a tiny girl in our compartment. "She's friends with Percy's little sister, and is waiting for her to get here. She expects to be in Ravenclaw." Luna was paying attention, and I told her, "This is Penelope Clearwater. She's the sixth-year girls' prefect for Ravenclaw."

As the older girl got acquainted with the younger, more of our friends started to come in, and there was a lot of standing up to help people get trunks loaded and compartments filled. We wound up with a similar arrangement as we had on the train home, with the Gryffindor quidditch team anchoring compartments for their friends and associates.

The only slight difficulty was when a distracted dark-haired Slytherin boy that I thought was in Draco's year tried to take one of our saved compartments. "Sorry," I told him. "That one's reserved. I think I saw Draco getting on toward the middle of the train, if you want to sit with the other Slytherins."

"Apologies," he said, seemed to recognize me, considered saying something, then started back down the train, flicking a considering look back at me. I noted that his ornate trunk had "Nott" inscribed on it. I'd have to ask Draco about it later.

As usual, the Weasleys managed to show up only a few minutes before the train left, scrambling to get everyone on. When our prefects were all off patrol, we had nearly twenty kids juggling in between four very full compartments for eight hours. It was chaos, especially when everyone needed to change into robes for school, but it was a lot of fun.

It was surprising, still, being so excited to just be a kid with a bunch of friends. I was heading back to Hogwarts.


	19. Dark Room 5: First Weeks

## A Few of My Favorite Things

Unlike the previous year, there were no major announcements at the welcoming feast like terrible deaths hidden in the castle. Lockhart was, indeed, the new defense professor. Gryffindor got Ginny Weasley and the excitable boy with the camera I'd met at Remus' signing, as well as eight other tiny children who I hadn't met previously. Luna, as she expected, went to Ravenclaw.

Even having dropped history and astronomy, my class schedule was intense compared to fifth year, with very few free periods. At least I didn't have to stay up late once a week for astronomy anymore. I quickly discovered why there was so much time in my schedule: all the NEWT-level classes included every house, so the professors didn't have to split their time in half for the year group.

For most periods, enough people had dropped after OWLs that it was still a reasonable class size, but not all. Very few students had failed their OWLs entirely, so there were still nearly forty students in my year trying to take at least _some_ classes. Several of the core ones like charms and transfiguration were _packed_.

At least Percy was pleased that he got to sit with Penny basically every period.

We'd started on Wednesday, and I'd had nearly all of my classes within the first two days, but my first defense class with Lockhart wasn't until Friday morning. After the previous classes had already loaded us down with research topics for the year and homework, I didn't know what to expect from defense.

The man swanned into the room once we were all seated, and took a moment to look at everyone before proceeding with, "Ah, sixth-years! The best-of-the-best, who did well enough on your OWL exams to continue with defense. Soon you, like me, will be out in the world, defeating evil wherever you find it, yes? Ha ha! But there's so much left to learn, and learn you shall!

"For those that missed my introduction at the feast, I am Gilderoy Lockhart: Order of Merlin (third class), honorary member of the Dark Force Defense League, and," he grinned, the light literally sparkling off his teeth, "five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most-Charming Smile Award. You might think that last is superfluous to your education, but there are more nasties than you expect that can at least be _distracted_ by style.

"While I have your OWL results here, they don't really go into specifics about what areas you're most proficient in, so I've prepared a little quiz to gauge your knowledge and, in particular, whether you've already read ahead in your texts for the year. It's open book, thirty minutes, and this won't be graded but is just for me to properly tailor later lessons. Let's pass these out and begin!"

I'd already heard Neville, Seamus, and the twins complaining about this, and I'd figured that he _certainly_ wouldn't give his NEWT classes the same quiz as he'd given the second-years. I was wrong. There were 54 questions, nearly all of them more about Lockhart's favorites than defense material.

It was also disturbing that I realized I knew most of the answers, since I _had_ actually read all of his novels.

It was, surprisingly enough, Marcus Flint who broke first. The caveman-looking Slytherin quidditch captain didn't even raise his hand before blurting, "Excuse me, professor? Do you realize you gave us the same quiz you gave to the _first-years_?"

"Of course," Lockhart nodded, distracted from where he'd been appreciating one of his own portraits at the front of the classroom. "I couldn't very well write such an exhaustive quiz for seven different year groups. Rest assured, I expect that my upper years will do significantly better than the lowers, since you've had so much more time to learn."

"And how does knowing your favorite color help you tell how good we are at defense?" Flint growled, clearly not buying it.

"Ah, yes, I see where the confusion might arise!" the professor explained. "You see, if I just asked about defense subjects, you could have gotten that information from _anywhere_. By asking questions specific to your texts, I instead confirm whether you've read them thoroughly."

It was a dumb answer, but one that was hard to argue against explicitly, so Flint simply growled again but went back to the quiz. There was a lot of muttering around the class about how they never thought they'd miss _Quirrell's_ teaching style, particularly from the guys. It seemed like the professor was nice enough to look at that the witches in class were mostly willing to give him some slack.

When the time was up, he collected the quizzes and sorted through, tut-tutting most of the answers he saw. "I can see that many of you are _creative_ , if not kind," he complained, before finally hitting on one, "Ah! Someone did the reading. Good show, Mr. Dresden?"

The room turned to me, several with scowls, and I shrugged. "I'm a fan?"

"Right!" Lockhart lit up. "You're the young man from my signing. Excellent, glad to have you in my class! Ten points for Gryffindor!" He set the quizzes aside and announced, "Now! To business. You wanted a practical exercise, young Slytherin? It doesn't get much more practical… than this!"

He whipped a paisley tablecloth off of what turned out to be a large cube-shaped cage that was next to his desk, revealing a dog-sized black-and-brown spider. It immediately started chittering and banging its legs against the bars of the cage, muttering, "Kill! Eat you all! Eat the fancy man first!"

"Professor Lockhart!" Percy gasped. "Acromantulas are a class quintuple-X magical beast!"

"Perfect for a NEWT class, yes?" the professor nodded, smiling. "Professor Kettleburn will be showing these off to those of you who are in care of magical creatures, but I convinced Mr. Hagrid to give us a sneak preview." I had my blasting rod in hand and my shield bracelet ready, having heard about how Lockhart unleashed a bunch of pixies on his second-year class (one of which seemed especially bright and had escaped to go find the kitchens and bully the house elves into making it a pizza). But apparently he'd learned his lesson about the trouble that caused, because he gave the cage a wide berth and simply asked, "Now what can everyone tell me about acromantulas?"

The rest of the class was actually pretty educational. I hadn't realized just how big the spiders I'd encountered in the forest the previous summer could get. This one was still pretty small for its species, probably only a few years old. They could live up to several decades, and just kept getting bigger the older they got until they were the size of a van. Their venom was an incredibly deadly paralytic, and, as I'd noted even with the babies, they had no qualms about hunting wizards.

They also had a second set of longer pedipalps around their mouth that were highly dextrous. That wasn't something anyone in class realized until the muttering spider let loose an excited shriek of, "Free!" and kicked open the door of its cage, having successfully picked the lock.

Most of the class had let their guards down, unfortunately including me. The spider leaped free, Lockhart squealed and fell over his own desk backpedaling, and the spider made a leap at Alexis, Oliver's girlfriend, who'd taken up a seat in the front row. Fortunately, even flat-footed, my roommate had excellent quidditch reflexes and he managed to keep his hands away from its mouth and shove it away from underneath. "Flint!" he shouted, having deliberately directed it at his quidditch rival.

"Right!" the cro-magnon chaser grunted, watching the spider like a passed quaffle, picking his moment, and slamming it from behind with his bookbag while shouting, "Dresden!"

Not expecting to be included in the scrum, I nonetheless managed to get my bracelet out and a shield up, knocking the large spider nearly straight up into the air while I yelled, "Pull!"

Showing that their passing OWL score wasn't a fluke, the rest of the class had managed to get wands out and a dozen red lights of stunners hit it from every direction at once, the thoroughly stunned spider flopping wetly onto the class floor next to me a second later.

Lockhart, untangling himself from his robes and peeking over the desk sighed in relief and said, "Excellent work, class. Three points to each of you. If someone could please put that thing back in the cage and perhaps put a more solid locking spell on it? I forgot that Mr. Hagrid wouldn't have been able to do so." Once Percy had levitated the spider back into the cage and charmed the lock, the professor said, "I guess that's enough excitement for today. Class dismissed!"

He was busily fixing his hair and cleaning his robes as we exited.

## Stay Focused

Immediately after defense class, I had my focus seminar at the only time I'd had a free period that matched the second year Gryffindors and that featured a Slytherin class Millicent could get out of. Considering that the Hogwarts schedule featured the six core professors with daytime classes trying to juggle a dozen different sections of class each week while still leaving space for electives, it was a wonder there was _any_ overlap.

I'd also previously wondered how they found time to grade the homework of a couple hundred students submitting primarily essays, until I found out that a lot of the NEWT workload involved grading lower-year assignments. Fortunately, they weren't handed out to members of the same house to prevent favoritism, so I wasn't going to have to ever handle the mountains of overwork that Hermione continued to submit.

The girl in question had beaten me to the classroom we used for my seminar, and I heard her talking to someone as I came down the hallway toward it. I'd assumed it was Seamus, until I heard a much deeper man's voice respond in an American accent. "Well, that's very impressive, Miss. Took me 'til I was fourteen to really get started on wandless." He sounded Texan, maybe.

When I actually entered the classroom and saw the person talking, I immediately assumed he couldn't be much _more_ than fourteen, small and boyish with short-cut blond hair. But he didn't carry himself like a kid, and the voice was too deep, so I figured he just had a baby face. "New transfer?" I asked, cautiously. He'd made a token attempt to put on robes, but had them hanging open over a sweatshirt and jeans, and had a huge knife strapped to his right leg.

"Not exactly," he grinned, holding out a hand. "Bill Meyers. They're lookin' at whether I can do what you've been doin' for the first-years, so'n you don't have ta, goin' forward. Maybe make it a cross-year thang, if we get enough interest."

I shook his hand, frowning, "They had to go to Texas to find someone that could teach focus magic?"

He shrugged, taking his hand back after a firm shake. "Don't make much sense, huh? It's all real political. I was tryin' ta join the MACUSA auror force, but they ain't much more open to our kinda castin' there than they are here. Don't like apprenticeships when they're fillin' out your bona-fides. But my mentor's connected enough that she heard about this. I'd be tradin' teaching for gettin' ta audit some'a the theory classes here."

"You should join a house!" Hermione enthused. "I bet you'd get Gryffindor like us."

"Nah, miss," he shook his head. "I'mma little old for dormin' up with you lot. I know I look young, but I'm actually 19. I'll only be around a day or two each week ta start. Got a job lined up ta do security down at that town down the hill the rest of the time."

"Hogsmeade? Yeah, they can use it," I grimaced. "How do you feel about wargs and werewolves?"

He snorted. "Heard about that, hoss. I think that's what sold 'em. I'm alright in a scrap, sure 'nough."

Behind me, Seamus and Millicent finally showed up and before they could ask who the new guy was and smirking from the "hoss" comment, I told them, "This is Wild Bill. He's going to be doing a similar seminar for the first-years, and wanted to meet us?"

"'Wild Bill,' huh? I like it," he laughed. "Yeah, I'm here ta meet y'all, and figure out what kinda stuff you taught 'em last year so I know what ta expect."

Nodding, and not feeling threatened by the guy, we went over some of the focus and ritual work we did when the three were first-years. I explained after the summary, "Biggest problem is access to enough foci to really show how you do the spells they're learning in charms class. I guess Hermione was telling you when we came in that she's interested in learning more wandless and wordless stuff this year, since she doesn't really _need_ to learn to use other foci. And we were actually going to talk about making foci for the year today. Seamus?"

"I'm thinkin' I need to get a blastin' rod, yeah?" the Irish boy asked. "Stop makin' fire when I don't meanta, and really get it under control."

"I think we can handle that," I nodded. "As long as it's more about fire spells, I can probably show you enough enchanting basics to make it work. Millicent?"

"Maybe a potions knife?" the big Slytherin girl thought out loud. "But I don't know what I could do with that besides the severing charm… and it can already cut things."

After a glance to make sure I didn't mind him joining in, Bill pulled his own oversized Bowie knife out of its thigh holster and showed it to her. "Lotta things you can do with a knife, miss. Cuttin' spells, obviously, and you can actually work a buncha motion magic in it so you can throw it, control it, and get it to come back."

I thought about it and nodded, "I think we can work with that, though etching runes into metal's a little more advanced than carving a blasting rod. Check with your head of house to make sure it's okay if you're carrying a knife around. Not actually more deadly than wands, but some people are weird about knives."

"Oh, right!" Bill grimaced. "I fergot about how twitchy the English are about weapons. Guess I'm gonna spend the weekend figurin' out how to glamor up my sheath so I can walk around."

"You can just walk around with that knife in America?" Hermione boggled.

"Well, it might raise an eyebrow or two in New York or Chicago," he shrugged. "But everythin's bigger in Texas."

"Better not let Professor Lockhart's ego go there, then," Seamus grumbled. "You jus' had 'im, right, Harry? Is the NEWT class any better than ours?"

We managed to get back to focus seminar planning after only a little bit of complaining about Lockhart, mostly because Hermione was quite taken with him and didn't like to hear it. Millicent seemed to have a bit of a crush as well. But all of them admitted that their previous classes hadn't been great.

So after getting the rest of my schedule out of the way for the day, I sent Lockhart a note asking if we could meet after he finished classes, and he nodded at me to follow him out after dinner. I was intending to give him some pointers on what everyone expected, and maybe see if I could get him to fess up about just being a novelist whose shtick had gone too far.

As he led me into his office through the defense classroom, every available surface plastered with his portraits and awards, I was also on the lookout for any runes that might be part of an entropy curse on the defense position. Bob had thought that it would have to be anchored somewhere physical to last this long, so the place the professor spent the most time would make sense. I didn't see anything on my first look at the office, of course, because it probably wouldn't be somewhere obvious.

While I'd fully intended to lead off with knowing that he was at least something of a fraud, I was surprised that he started the discussion. "Ah, Harry Dresden. You mentioned dueling at my signing? I have some time right now if you want to have a session?"

Surprised but having no reason to object, we cleared some space in the defense classroom and dueled for a couple of hours. To my complete shock, he was actually quite skilled. His style was more about avoidance than blocking. Maybe it was something to do with getting flustered with so many fans watching, but one-on-one he wasn't distracted by his appearance and even gave better than he got. He landed quite a few stunners on me, which was probably why my memory of the whole session was a little hazy.

He thanked me for the workout and sent me on my way, exhausted, a little before curfew. Maybe the class wouldn't be a complete waste after all?

## Mapping the Dark

"...and I think here is the nexus of where the, to use Harry's term, hellfire enters the matrix," Percy gestured with the feather end of his quill at a section of the diagram we'd made of the imperius curse. We'd set up at our favorite table in the school library to go over our research on Saturday night.

"It's almost an _interface_ ," Penny added, tracing the outer edges of the area Percy had designated. "I've seen these elements show up in several dark spells. But the middle of the area is similar only to fiendfyre."

"So," I summed up, "this chunk is the hellfire core, and the more common dark elements are basically the power adapter to move that into the rest of the spell matrix."

Percy nodded along with Penny, and I remembered that his father was weirdly fascinated by electrical plugs of all things, so might actually know what an adapter did. "Likewise, we can take the region where the patronus differs from fiendfyre," he gestured on _that_ matrix on a separate sheet of parchment, "and look for similarities to other light spells and assume that is interface as well."

I sighed, "That's a little harder than I'd hoped. We basically need to isolate the real soulfire core, put it next to the imperius framework that isn't dark, and do a bunch of arithmancy to get them to connect up."

"Nothing's ever really plug-and-play," Penny grinned. "But I'm sure we can get the professors to check our math when it's done."

I didn't mention that I could probably also put Bob on it and make it a lot easier. He'd been integral in helping me work out the diagram for the imperius in the first place, since just having it cast _on_ me wasn't completely sufficient to fully understand it. Instead, I nodded at the tiny boy walking by with a stack of books, "Hey, Colin, it's a little early to be that loaded down with homework, yeah?"

He grinned at the implied invitation, and set the stack down on our table so we could see the spines. It looked like a bunch of books about photography, "Turns out it's not just as simple as developing photos in a special potion to get them to move. There's a potion for the negatives, charms for the camera, and maybe other stuff. Biggest problem is going to be finding the right dark room."

"There's probably spare classrooms in the dungeons," Penny ventured, amused by the enthusiastic muggleborn boy.

"I would expect some of the Slytherins to make that inadvisable," Percy shook his head.

"Oh, right, the whole Gryffindor/Slytherin thing," Penny frowned. "I don't think there are any spare classrooms on the upper floors without windows, but maybe you could just block them out?"

Colin nodded. "Thanks! I'll see if Cyril will show some to me." Cyril Meakin had, in fact, been appointed the new boys' prefect, despite the slight debacle of getting imperiused and trying to kidnap me the previous year. It, after all, hadn't been his fault. Colin stared at the spell diagrams and asked, "What are you doing? Those are complicated looking!"

"Trying to figure out how to make some new spells," I told him. "You'll only see diagrams like this if you decide to start taking arithmancy in third year. Good luck with your photography."

"Thanks!" he smiled, then got the hint and took his books, heading to check out.

After he left and I realized that my friends were staring at me trying to avoid laughing I admitted, "Yes. I'm collecting little first-year buddies even faster this year than last year. I don't know why."

"I think it's adorable," Penny said. "You're like the biggest big brother any of them have ever seen."

Percy nodded. "It at least makes it hard to lose you in a crowd. I think that is why Bill is Ginny's favorite big brother. She got separated on the train platform once and found us right away because she could see his hair poking out above everyone else."

"Speaking of Ginny's favorite people," I asked Penny, "How's Luna settling into Ravenclaw?"

She frowned, "Not well. She's got kind of a _Rain Man_ thing going on. Clearly brilliant enough to be in the house, but her mind just goes off on all these tangents and her father didn't help by packing it full of weird conspiracy theories."

"As I recall, she was much worse before Ginny started making an effort to socialize her," Percy added. "I heard from my family her mother died suddenly last year, and the Lovegood method of coping was to retreat further into nonsense."

"I'm not sure it's all nonsense," I told them. "There are things that the wizarding world considers children's stories that are real and just not commonly known. It's probably like when muggles find out about our world without getting obliviated: easy to believe _actually_ crazy things when everyone tells you you're crazy for believing things you're sure are real."

Penny nodded, though she and Percy probably half thought that _I_ was crazy for believing my godmother about the Nevernever, since they hadn't really seen proof. "I'll talk to her about whether it's okay for the rest of the house to know about her mother. They may give her more slack if they know she's just had a family tragedy."

"Thanks, Penny," I told her.

Thoroughly derailed and getting close to curfew, we packed up and headed out. On the way past the front desk, I nodded to the librarian, "Nice hat, Madam P," I told her. "You get it for your convention?"

The stern middle-aged witch adjusted the new black hat and scoffed, "It was a conference, not a convention."

"The only difference is how educational the panels during the day are, right?" I grinned. "I'm sure the evening parties are just as wild."

"Hardly," she sniffed. I figured she must have really gotten up to something if she wasn't willing to engage. Usually she at least gave a little bit on my joking.

"Oh," I said, remembering, "Why didn't you tell me one of the alumni was a writer? Lupin's stuff is a little young, but it's at least quality fiction. Would be something else good to read around here for the fiction section."

She regarded me for a moment as if zoned out thinking, then replied, "Perhaps if he'd published through a wizarding press. But I don't think we can have _muggle pulp_ in the Hogwarts library." Her eyes lidded slightly, then she said, "Library is closing. Please get back to your dorms."

It was annoying when you found out someone was a secret bigot. Our previous conversations had not revealed that particular point about Madam Pince. I frowned and just left without saying goodnight. I _was_ definitely planning on enlisting the twins to see how many muggle novels we could shelve before she noticed.

When I got back to the Gryffindor common room, I noticed Mathilda with books and parchment spread out over one of the tables, looking frazzled. I guessed her OWL year started fast. "Already loaded down with homework?" I asked, taking a seat at one of the other chairs by the table.

"No! Well, yes, but this is mostly not that. I was trying to see if I could figure out where all the beasts are coming from. Uncle Abraham was right, there shouldn't be wargs in Britain anymore. Or several of the other things we've seen…" she gestured at open books and the notes she'd been taking.

I hesitated, not sure whether to tell her about the Veil. She'd already kept my secret about Bob, but there would be a lot more pressure for her to tell people in authority if she knew Bellatrix Lestrange was behind the creature attacks, and that could lead back to me getting in serious trouble. So I hedged. "You remember the leucrotta last year? I think this is the same thing. The Veil that keeps our world apart from the Nevernever is weakening, and bigger things can get through."

"I know you and Oliver believe in faeries, Harry," she said, frustrated, "but there's nothing in any of this that talks about it. Why now? Why here?"

I shrugged, and I honestly wasn't totally sure what my godmother's plan was. "It's a tough sell, I know. I think wizards locked the fae out so long ago they've forgotten they did it, so I don't know who you need to talk to who could even think about repairing the Veil. Department of Mysteries, maybe? I was always told that the fae on the other side want nothing more than to get in, so it's possible it just finally got weak enough that they decided to make an effort to break out."

Maybe she could tell I was holding something back, but she finally nodded and just said, "Thanks, maybe I can write that to my uncle. See if he's willing to escalate it. Will you talk to him if I tell him it's your idea? He likes you. And can I talk to Bob about it?"

"Sure, to both," I said, hoping that Abraham Grimblehawk wouldn't realize there was further to dig.

"Thanks, Harry," she said, relaxing back and managing to slide a leg out to lean against mine. "How is the spell research going?"

"Well, Mr. Creevey thinks that we've at least made some really complicated diagrams," I grinned, then started to tell her about the night's study session.

It was becoming more and more comfortable to talk with the girl, and it would be so easy to go along with her plan to just start dating. But even beyond my reticence to start a new relationship, it was dangerous for her to know all my secrets. I needed to figure out how to get out from under my godmother's thumb, before I was too complicit in her crimes to not go down with her.

But I was also worried that whatever she was up to was so big she might not actually wind up _going down_. Just unleashing monsters couldn't be the endgame. What would the wizarding world do if the real fae from long-forgotten tales started getting loose?

Could it even survive?

## Horsepower

"Let's go on an adventure!" the tiny redhead suggested. Ginny Weasley had taken a giant leap and sprawled across the top of the plush armchair in which Percy was sitting before making this request.

Percy looked up from the book he'd been reading with a sigh, as if this was a regular Sunday morning occurrence, his little sister having chosen the optimal moment in which he was engrossed in his book. "Surely you have not even _begun_ to explore Hogwarts on your own?" he tried.

"Dear Diary," Ginny moaned, flopping disconsolately across the top of the chair, her flailing hand managing to muss Percy's hair and nearly dislodge his glasses. "Today I had to ask the _twins_ to take me on an adventure, because Percy was too _boring_ to go outside where it was _nice_. That was how I got detention before I'd even been at school for a _week_."

Sending a long-suffering look across to me in my own chair, where I'd clearly abandoned my book to be amused by his little sister, Percy asked, "Harry, what do you think?"

I shrugged, also a little bored to be cooped up in the castle for one of the likely few nice days outside. "We could check with Hagrid at lunch to see if he has anything to show off?"

"Yes! That guy! Showing off! Capital!" Ginny announced, slowly rolling around on the top of the chair and making faces, her long red hair cascading over her brother's head as she demonstrated her excitement.

"Fine, _Ginevra_ ," Percy deliberately extended her name, "we shall go on an 'adventure' after lunch."

"Yay!" she raised both hands in exultation, clipping the armrests with her fists since she was now totally upside down with her back across the top of the chair, her head resting on Percy's. "Thank you, Percival."

"You should make sure to bring an intrepid reporter and a photographer to document your exploits," I told her, making sure Luna and Colin would get included. Eventually she might even have enough friends to entertain _herself_.

And it all ballooned from there. Hagrid was, indeed, interested in going ahead and making friends with new Gryffindor first-years, and suggested showing off the thestrals because invisible horses were always a big hit. Hermione's crew got wind of it and refused to be left out. The twins invited themselves when their other siblings were going outside, and grabbed Lee. Mathilda found out. We grabbed Penny, Oliver, and Alexis to help corral ten lower-years. And somehow Professor McGonagall wound up being included as well.

All told, 13 Gryffindors, two Ravenclaws, and the assistant Headmistress met Hagrid at his hut around 2 pm. "Sorry, Hagrid," I told him, "The guest list got away from me."

"No worries, Harry," he told me. "Though I dunno how many of 'em will be able ta see the thestrals. Got several younguns that need ta get used ta people, though."

As we walked to the thestral pens, it was very interesting to watch the social dynamics at play. Ron was temporarily in charge of the second-years, because this seemed to be a Weasley outing, but their group had no permanent leader. This contrasted with the first-years, where Ginny was clearly the dominant personality and Colin was just excited to be included, except that Luna had an eye on Penny at all times and Colin still had a bit of puppy dog loyalty from when Hermione had met him at Remus' signing. The twins and Lee, as fourth-years, were downplaying their usual rambunctiousness to make sure they were viewed as upperclassmen to the little kids.

And the actual upperclassmen were mostly wrapped up in their dating relationships. I was just glad that Mathilda was genuinely interested in magical creatures. She hadn't noticed that Percy/Penny and Oliver/Alexis were taking this as an extremely coupley walk, which left me some breathing room. I glanced back to Professor McGonagall to see if she'd noticed, but she'd shifted to her animagus form, following us at a distance as a tabby cat.

The paddock for the thestrals was not too deep into the Forbidden Forest, and I spotted dozens of the bat-winged, lizardlike black horses romping about the space. Most of the kids seemed to think we'd just brought them to a large, empty pen, though Luna was clearly tracking the creatures with her eyes. I wondered if it was her enhanced sensitivity to magic, or, based on what Percy had said, whether she'd actually watched her mother pass. Of the rest of the group, it seemed like Alexis and Lee were also aware of the creatures, though I wouldn't think to ask them when they'd seen someone die.

"What yer hopefully not seein' is called 'thestrals,'" Hagrid explained. "They're horse-like critters that we use ta pull the coaches ta Hogmeade. Bet some 'a yeh thought they was automatic, yeah? Yeh can only see 'em if yeh've seen someone die up close. But they're real friendly, like."

It was interesting to me that Quirrell's death didn't seem to count, because Hermione, Neville, and Ron were oblivious even though he'd died in front of them barely three months earlier. Maybe the whole situation had been so stressful they hadn't really _comprehended_ that someone died.

For the next hour or so, Hagrid gave rides to most of the kids on the more docile thestrals, which was apparently especially interesting if you couldn't see the creature you were riding on. Colin got lots of pictures of the outing, and, assuming he hadn't figured out how to take wizarding photos overnight, there was probably no chance of them showing the thestrals, just riders floating in mid-air. At some point, McGonagall changed out of her cat form and seemed to be evaluating Hagrid's interactions with the kids. I had no doubt that the older witch, who'd been in at least one war, could see the thestrals.

Seamus was riding a thestral about an hour into the experience when Luna raised a hand in a "stop" gesture and looked deeper into the forest. "We should go see the unicorns," she said, picking up on who knows what.

Most of the kids seemed inclined to ignore the girl, but I spotted a flash of white through the trees and Hagrid said, "Ah, there they are! Usually don' get this close." Slipping back into teaching mode, he said, "Now, they're real skittish in the best o' times, an' they'll run if yeh aren't… well… pure." He gave an apologetic look to Professor McGonagall.

"That's quite alright, Hagrid, I'll happily stay back here," she said, but gave a look to the older students as if evaluating whether _they_ were "pure" enough to visit with unicorns.

"I'll, uh, keep the professor company," I said. A few of the older kids shot me a look, realizing why only I and the assistant headmistress would be unable to meet unicorns. Mathilda widened her eyes and gave me a smirk. McGonagall only gave me a stern raised eyebrow. I shrugged.

The rest of the crew headed into the forest (I was admittedly slightly surprised at Oliver and Alexis being able to go on the trip) while I hung back with the assistant headmistress by the thestral pen. The afternoon sunlight occasionally broke through the tree cover in tight beams when the wind would blow, and when the beams would hit one of the skeletal black horses, they'd oddly continue to the ground, as if the horses were partially translucent. I knew from Bob that they weren't fully present in our reality, which is what made their powers work and their hide so good for expansion charms. The effect of the light was quite pretty.

I don't know how long we just stood there watching the thestrals, when McGonagall spoke up, "I talked to Mr. Meyers. He seemed very impressed with your curriculum."

"Oh, good," I said. "He seems cool. Already have candidates for first-years that need to use foci instead of a wand?"

She nodded, "A few. With someone whose time we're not taking away from classes, we can try for more than the most obvious cases."

"Right, two kids that are hopeless with a wand, and one tiny prodigy that invited herself regardless."

McGonagall chuckled, "Yes. Mr. Finnegan and Ms. Bulstrode _are_ doing much better than anyone expected, and I think you'll have Ms. Granger onto wandless casting and enchanting years early."

"She's already planning to try to figure out wandless this year," I acknowledged.

"So Mr. Meyers passed on. He gave a thorough briefing. The one thing I didn't understand was some of his American euphemisms. What is a 'hoss?'"

"It's Texan for 'horse,'" I explained. "Not sure if he calls everybody around his age that, or just the ones that are tall and gangly like a horse."

"Hmm," she considered. "It does suit you, _hoss_."

Before I could argue with her about perpetuating the nickname, I noticed the others coming back. "Harry! It was great! I never thought I'd get that close to unicorns!" Mathilda yelled, too enthusiastic to wait to get into normal conversational distance. "And the centaurs! You'll never believe it!"

"Believe what?" I asked.

Hagrid held out what I first thought was a short, white stick, and explained, "Firenze were there ta' translate fer the unicorns. The centaurs cleaned up the bodies that You-Know-Who made last year. They wanted ta reward folk for drivin' 'im off. They gave the kids tail hairs, but they said they wanted yeh ta have _this_."

He placed the long, spiraling white horn in my surprised hands. The pure magic contained within practically hummed beneath my fingers. I didn't feel worthy of even holding it. "I can't…" I started.

"Do something good with it, Harry," McGonagall said, shaken enough by the gesture to use my first name. "Let's see something worthwhile come of the crime."

I nodded, still shaken myself, and slipped the horn into one of my belt pouches that was deep and currently free of anything that could damage it. "No pressure, or anything," I grumbled, already thinking of uses I could put the horn to and discarding them all as unworthy.

We'd started heading back to the castle by the time my head cleared enough to remember that they'd mentioned running into Firenze, the Fabio-like centaur I'd met the previous summer.

"So did the unicorns shy away when they caught you ladies having _impure thoughts_ about the centaur?" I winked.

Several giggling blushes and two boyfriends looking put out at their witches were my reward for the joke.

## Forever Cutting

McGonagall wasn't going to let the "hoss" thing go, and had even tried to get me to volunteer to be turned into a horse to demonstrate human transfiguration for our class Monday morning. I'd demurred, but had honestly considered it because of the good mood I was in: we'd just gotten there off of a defense class that hadn't been awful. Lockhart had us doing some in-class dueling, building toward more silent and focusless casting. He hadn't really presented any keen insights, but he wasn't actively being an impediment and that was exciting.

After lunch was our once-weekly potions class, scheduled to take up the whole afternoon. It had lost more students than any other core class I was still attending, including most of the more annoying Slytherin quidditch team members. Unfortunately, Oliver had also dropped it, so I was down a lab partner. While Percy clearly wanted to take the opportunity to partner with Penny, he'd gotten into a good rhythm with his fellow prefect, Alexis, Oliver's girlfriend. So that left me partnered with Penny.

Professor Belby's bespoke potioneer's robes were as immaculate as ever, but his hair had gone full mad scientist over the summer. Still sticking up all over from his nervous habit of running his potions-covered hands through it, a substantial chunk on the left side was gouged out with a hint of black still on the tips, as if he managed to catch his own hair on fire recently. As usual, he didn't notice.

"Welcome to NEWT potions," he lectured, once we were all settled. "Most of you did very well on your OWLs. Here it all changes. You have copies of _Advanced Potion Making_. It's the classic. We'll barely be using it, so there was no point in getting a new text. Well, we'll be using it as a stepping-off point. This year is about improvisation. We'll learn what you can change about recipes to get a different result. What you can substitute and still get the same. Next year, we'll be inventing potions from first principles.

"I have up here the standard components of the Draught of the Living Death," he gestured at several containers on his desk. "Find the recipe in your books." I did and found that the recipe was as thoroughly annotated as everything else in the text. "Now, let's talk about why it's written the way it is, and how the classic recipe can be _improved_ …"

During the following discussion, I wound up scoring several points by explaining the sopophorous bean's reaction to pressure and silver as a way to extract juice, and why periodic alteration in stirring direction better melded the ingredients. While both made sense from my previous knowledge of the subject, I was admittedly prompted by the handwritten notes in my textbook. Penny had noticed early on, read over my shoulder, and snagged her own points for Ravenclaw by pointing out that a more arithmantically-significant number of beans, 13 instead of 12, were relevant to the concoction.

With the longer class, Belby wound up giving us a break after the discussion, and Percy immediately pulled his chair over to our station. "Excellent contributions, both," he said, then noticed we were busily flipping through my textbook. "That is a… heavily annotated book."

Penny nodded, grinning, "Looks like Harry got the secondhand from someone very talented at potions. Lots of good modifications and notes in here."

I caught a page before Penny flipped past it and pointed, "Not just potions. This is a whole arithmancy matrix done in the margins. Looks like he already took it to a spell creation. 'Sectumsempra' is what, 'Forever cutting' or 'Eternally severed?'"

"Could be both," Percy worked out his own Latin translation. He tried to read the small handwriting upside down, "What does it say next to it? 'For Enemies?'"

I nodded, then added, "Looks like a modified severing charm." I'd been getting a lot of use out of that charm with all my leatherworking of the last year.

"Oh, my," Penny breathed, taking in the arithmancy for the spell. "I've seen a lot of these constructs in our work with the fiendfyre interface. It doesn't have the hellfire core, but I think this basically takes the severing charm and turns it into a pretty dark curse."

Percy had moved all the way around, leaning over Penny's shoulder so he could get a better look. "I think so too. And notice the missing and altered factors. This should have increased range and… Harry, do you remember what this part does in the severing charm?"

I looked where he was pointing and let out a hiss of breath, "In the severing charm that's the piece that ensures it's far more effective against dead organic material than living, so you have to try really hard to cut your own finger off. This _flips_ it. This will cut off your finger but be much less useful for craft work. And I bet it deals curse wounds."

"What kind of student dreams up something this vicious and just says 'For Enemies?'" wondered Penny.

I shrugged and said, "Called himself the Half-Blood Prince." I showed them the "property of" note in the back of the book.

"Pretentious," Penny scoffed.

"Well, this book seems old enough that it cannot be active evidence in any crimes," Percy thought out loud. "But we may still want to inquire with the DMLE whether this curse has been used." Showing how much _less_ of a narc he'd become over the last year, he then added, "Quietly. And perhaps after we have fully examined the rest of the text for context."

"And any useful arithmancy work that's not gross or illegal," I nodded. While I was the last person to run to the aurors with a book, I didn't really want something as nasty as this spell getting out without people being aware of it, and I didn't want to be left holding something that could be pinned on me if it had been used to kill people.

Penny had been flipping ahead and said, "Well, at least he was responsible enough to invent a counterspell: 'Vulnera Sanentur.' Maybe it was just a thought exercise? Looks like this might be an even better general spell for cuts than the basic healing charm."

At that, Professor Belby came back out of his office, and the break was over, so Percy headed back to his desk and Penny let me take control of my textbook back.

Since potions was the last (and only) class of the afternoon and ended just before dinner, we'd planned to check the book over further in the library after the meal. We'd met back up outside the great hall and were on the way when I heard an unusual noise and asked, "Do they actually have radiators in the castle?" They both looked confused so I explained, "Sounds like hissing pipes, up through the wall, like when someone cuts the heat on."

"Well there _are_ pipes in the walls," Percy nodded. "I believe most of them were installed as part of a class project in the 1940s when they decided to modernize the toilets, which was no small feat. But they are only for plumbing, not for heating."

"Yeah, I didn't think so," I said. "Don't remember anything like that last year. I better mention it to Filch, then. Could be a leak."

Honestly, I might have forgotten about the incident altogether if, as soon as we started walking again, the acromantula hadn't whipped around the corner.

"Out of the way!" screamed the beast, favoring two injured legs in its flight and barely making contact with the floor.

Even with the injury, it effortlessly moved onto the wall to avoid us, and continued its dash down the hallway. "It's heading toward the great hall!" Penny gasped.

The three of us pounded after the immense spider, flinging stunners that continued to miss the erratic moving target. Ahead of us, we could spot other kids leaving dinner and I shouted ahead, "Acromantula! Dodge!" Fortunately, they all saw the thing coming and managed to dive out of the way. A mop of red hair that I was pretty sure was Ron Weasley was still safely behind several other kids but _shrieked_ and ran back into the room.

To our great surprise, rather than turning into the dining hall, the spider juked in the opposite direction and crossed the immense antechamber, hit the outer doors with enough force to bump them open so it could get out, and it was gone into the evening.

"What is going on!?" McGonagall asked, rushing out of the great hall with a hand holding her hat on having overheard the commotion.

"An acromantula was in the halls, Professor," Penny explained, slightly winded. "We thought it was attacking, but I guess it was trying to escape outside."

I caught my breath as the professor took that in, and mentioned, "Also, the plumbing might be broken in between here and the library." I thought for a moment, then admitted, "Probably the spider's the bigger problem, though."

We found out later that the acromantula had been the one from our defense class, which Lockhart had forgotten to get back to Hagrid and had just shoved in a corner of the classroom. It had somehow managed to smash its way out of the cage, despite the locking charm. Kettleburn was _very_ impressed. Nobody seemed to be sure what had convinced it to make such an athletic bid to escape.

Filch also didn't find anything wrong with the pipes. If anything, he figured they were cleaner than usual and thought maybe the noise I'd heard was some massive blockage finally breaking loose and scratching down the pipe. I apologized to him that "massive blockage" was a term he had to use in reference to the plumbing, but he said he was used to it. "If anything," he editorialized, "maybe that will give us a little time before that fool ghost manages to make another mess." The ghost that haunted one of the girls' bathrooms was apparently just corporeal enough to back up the toilets.

Sometimes, magic is really gross.


	20. Dark Room 6: Death Eater

## Quibbling

The morning after the acromantula escape, at breakfast, I was surprised to have an owl swoop in to deliver mail to me. I never got mail. The creature had a slightly cross-eyed expression on its face, and an unusual set of markings. After I relieved it of the attached parcel, it stumbled around on the table and then launched itself over to the end of the Ravenclaw table, where Luna gave it an affectionate pat and an owl treat before it went on its way. She turned and gave me a grin and thumbs up. I looked down and realized that this must be my first issue of the subscription to her father's paper that he'd gifted me.

_The Quibbler_ , it turned out, was less of a newspaper and more of a magazine. Well, that was perhaps giving it too much credit, because its production value was not _that_ much better than some of the fan 'zines I'd seen in Chicago music stores. It was actually _printed_ , rather than being handwritten and photocopied, but the layout was just as meandering, and it wasn't particularly thick. Most of the art was line drawings instead of photographs, all of it showing fantastic beasts more fantastic than anything covered in the Hogwarts class devoted to the same.

"The _Quibbler's_ out there, even for my mum," Oliver suggested, seeing what I'd gotten.

"Luna's father writes it," I told him. "Remember when he said he'd give me a subscription to his magazine when we met him on the train?"

"That… makes total sense," agreed Oliver, ruefully shaking his head.

I skimmed through it while we ate breakfast, and I admitted to him, "It's actually not that bad. Entertaining. There's a muggle magazine called the _Fortean Times_ that I think is kind of similar. Runs that line where you're not sure if you're reading something written by actual crazy people or you're just all in on a funny joke."

As I considered the publication for the rest of the day, I realized it might present me an opportunity. I didn't like being complicit in whatever it was that my godmother was up to, but I also didn't want to invite the questions that would arise if I warned any _rational_ authority.

_To the Editor,_

_I understand that the Ministry's Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures has spent several months defending against an onslaught of beasts of inexplicable origin attacking wizarding homes and businesses. I believe most of these have escaped through the Veil that protects our world from the home of the faeries. How? Dark wizards are deliberately stretching the Veil until something even worse can escape. The Ministry needs to act to strengthen the Veil before this plot is realized!_

_A Concerned Citizen_

I didn't know whether anyone who could do anything read Mr. Lovegood's magazine, but it couldn't hurt to try. At the very least, it might give him some credibility if people eventually figured out he'd been right. I wrote it up, deliberately trying to keep my handwriting precise and not too similar to my normal style, then sent it with a school owl.

Despite how sneaky I thought I was being, Luna caught up with me a few days later when I was alone outside, enjoying a rare sunny afternoon. "Daddy appreciates the article," she said. When I just gave her a shocked look, not having prepared a poker face for this eventuality, she explained, "The school owls are fairly recognizable, and I mentioned our conversation about the Nevernever. There really aren't many people that know about it."

"I guess he _is_ an investigative reporter," I allowed. "I'd like to stay anonymous, though."

"Dark wizards," she nodded, without explaining what she thought my relationship with those dark wizards _was_. "Congratulations, by the way."

"For what?"

"You've significantly reduced your nargle infestation since the party. Hardly any of them come near you anymore."

I shrugged, considering, "Could be the Hogwarts wards?"

"No. I noticed it on the train. It's almost as if you're protected."

"Rule of three?" I suggested. "I fought off my third attack by fae beasts in a year not long after the party."

She thought for a second, then nodded, "That could do it. It may only buy you a year and a day, though."

"I'll still take it," I smiled, not sure whether the girl had any special insight but enjoying that she was the only one I could talk to that didn't at least a little bit think what I knew about the Nevernever was children's stories. "Give something else a chance to try to kill me."

"Fenrir Greyback," she agreed, somehow again jumping to the right answer. "Daddy covered the attack in the previous edition, but he heard about it too late to talk to you directly. We aren't sure whether he's an independent or working for the Rotfang Conspiracy. Daddy thinks the latter because werewolves and vampires don't get along."

"He _did_ work with the Death Eaters during the war," I shrugged. "But I don't think he was after me for any organization other than his own." I thought for a second about an explanation that wouldn't reveal Remus' status to someone who was potentially way more insightful than anyone would give her credit for. "I'm friends with someone that he wanted to punish by killing me."

"That will make Daddy sad," she said, wistfully. "He doesn't like it when it's just one person doing a bad thing, instead of a group. He likes it when things make sense."

I almost laughed at the idea, but I got it. "If bad things happen because of a big conspiracy, you can stop the bad things if you can just find and stop the people in charge. But if anybody can do a bad thing, then crime can happen at any time."

"Or accidents," she nodded, sadly.

"Hey," I tried to cheer her up. "But if anyone can decide to do bad things, that _also_ means you don't have to wait on anyone else to tell you that you can do _good things_."

She smiled, "Like the _Quibbler_! Nobody told Daddy he could do it, but he did anyway, because people need to know the truth."

I nodded, changing the subject, "How are things going for you, so far?"

"Most of my year-mates have a worse nargle infestation than you did this summer," she frowned. "I haven't _told_ them that, because Ginny says it upsets people, but I think they know that I know because they don't seem to want to talk to me. Prefect Clearwater is helping, though."

"Good. Just keep in mind that most wizards seem to have a weirdly hard time with things they don't understand. Probably because they think they know more than anybody else." I basically gave her the same advice I'd given Hermione the previous year, "Just try to talk to them about stuff they think is important, and don't act like you're not taking it seriously. They'll be more inclined to let you talk about what _you_ want to talk about if you meet them halfway.

"Besides, the way things are going with the Veil… I'm worried that pretty soon everyone's going to find out that a lot of the stuff you can see but they can't is all too real."

She nodded, was about to say something else, then suddenly twitched her head and looked into the distance, whispering, "Ginny's in trouble." She immediately stood and started walking off, so I quickly grabbed my own things and followed.

After a few moments I realized we were heading toward the quidditch pitch. I vaguely remembered seeing a couple of redheads on brooms in the air earlier, and maybe heard that Ron was going to take Ginny to practice before Oliver let her try out for seeker. They weren't in the air, now, and Luna was charging ahead toward where I thought there was a shed behind the pitch that stored school brooms. The girl's legs were so short compared to my own that I only had to jog slightly to keep up as she broke into a full run.

As we rounded the stands and could see the shed, I saw three very familiar backs in Slytherin-colored robes: Flint, Montague, and Pucey, the three chasers that I'd run into when they were trying to intimidate the Gryffindor team's girls on the train a year before. "...do you know what _degloving_ means?" I heard Montague ask someone trapped inside the shed, in a repeat of his last year's performance.

Figuring we were repeating the same performance, and they'd notice me running up in a second anyway, I shouted, "Hey, assholes!" The three boys turned to frown at me and I could make out two small redheads inside the shed. As I slowed down to stop about twenty feet away, I asked, "Don't you three ever get tired of being sports movie cliches?"

"Dresden!" growled Flint. "We still _owe_ you." Apparently, they did _not_. He glanced behind me and gave a toothy grin when he realized we were well out of sight of anybody else. "Just you and a bunch of first-years now, Dresden."

"I'm a _second-year_!" Ron complained from inside the shed.

"You're right," I told him, planting my staff and shaking my shield bracelet free of my sleeve. "You need to go get some more guys?"

While I had apparently managed to convince everyone the previous year I was too risky to bully, I'd learned from other people that the staff was very bad at punishing bullying in general. Without a teacher, prefect, or a ton of witnesses, they were generally inclined to pretend there was nothing they could do. Given how backwards British wizarding culture was, it wasn't a surprise that their attitudes to bullying were those of a boarding school from the 19th century.

Which meant that the Slytherin boys finally saw their opportunity to get me back for embarrassing them the last year, and had their own wands out ready to start throwing hexes. I noticed Luna had orbited the confrontation when I stopped, and was moving to get to the shed while staying out of my line of fire. Good girl. For their own part, the Slytherin chasers were starting to move away from the shed and spread out slightly, barely acknowledging the little kids.

That was a mistake, since from inside the shed there was a pair of shouts that blended together, but I later learned were " _Chiroptera Mucosa!_ " from Ginny and " _Slugulus Eructo!_ " from Ron. Blasts of light hit Montague and Pucey in the sides as they started to turn and put up shields. With a groan, Montague covered his face as wings of snot began to rip their way free of his nose, and Pucey grimaced as slugs began to ooze out of his mouth.

Not to be left out, as Flint turned and considered something to take the kids he'd ignored out of the fight, Luna reached the side of the shed and yelled, " _Lumos Speculum!_ " A shimmering haze of light appeared in front of her, extending wide enough to obscure the door of the shed. Vague shapes in the light seemed to match the boys in front of the shield, like a holographic attempt at a mirror.

Smirking at how this clearly wasn't going to be _less_ of an embarrassment for the boys, I hissed, " _Ventus!_ " and angled my staff down, shoving a burst of air at their legs which caused all three, off balance, to stagger and take a knee. "And that's the _gentlest_ spell _I_ know," I lied to them. "Maybe you should go find someone your _own_ speed to bully, like five-year-olds."

They stumbled back to their feet, scowling, but realizing they would have to turn their backs on me to take out the kids, or take more prank spells from the kids to focus on me. And Montague was currently being assaulted by bats made of his own snot while Pucey had invertebrates rolling down the front of his robes.

Flint started to say something and I interrupted with, "I know, I know, 'Next time' and 'Watch your back' but never 'This time' or 'I challenge you to a duel to show I'm better.' Bye, guys."

Alternately sneezing, burping, and grumbling, the three boys grudgingly walked away. I heard Flint trying to dispel the jinxes once they rounded the quidditch stands, so I kept myself faced in that direction just in case they made another attempt from a better angle. But they were apparently shamed enough for the day to just head out.

Once it was clear I relaxed, the kids lowered their wands. "Thanks, Harry," Ron said.

"Thank Luna, she knew Ginny was in trouble," I told him. "I was just tagging along. And you three did most of the work, so good job. Just keep an eye out for bullies when you're off alone."

Ron nodded, worked up his courage to say, "Thanks, Luna!" to his sister's weird friend, and added, "That shield was awesome, too."

"It was my mother's," the girl said, sadly. "Very easy to cast. I liked your slugs."

"The twins taught me that," he nodded.

"And my bat bogey hex!" Ginny added.

As we headed back, the kids excitedly chattered about winning their first big magical skirmish, totally bouncing back from being cornered by bigger boys.

## Liberty, Equality, Fraternity

"C'mon, workaholics," Oliver chastised, leaning against the wall of the spare classroom we'd camped out in all Friday evening as it crept ever closer to curfew. "Just let it go for the weekend. Hogsmeade! While it's still reasonably warm outside! You need t'get some good sleep and then come back to it fresh next week." The late-September field trip weekend had actually fallen on what looked to be a pair of sunny days.

"Look at who's all relaxed now that he's finally got a seeker," Penny snarked.

"Percy! That's a house secret!" Oliver objected.

"Please," my other roommate disagreed. "She figured it out herself, and you just confirmed it."

"How's your mom taking it?" I asked.

Percy explained, "From her letters, she exists in a frantic superposition between sheer ecstasy that her daughter is the youngest seeker in a century and utter anxiety about the dangers of racing around on brooms with live bludgers."

"So about what you expected?" I grinned.

"Indeed."

Penny thought about it and grinned, "I don't suppose there are three more Weasleys that can play chaser about to enter school, are there? Once Oliver graduates there's already going to be more Weasleys than non-Weasleys on the Gryffindor team."

"Fortunately, no," Percy smiled. "Not even close cousins. Can you imagine how loud things would be at home with three more kids running around?"

"How's Katie taking the switch?" I asked Oliver.

"She's thrilled she isna the seeker anymore, but worried she won't do well as chaser and she'll get cut entirely," he frowned. "They didna tell me how much of team captain'd be managin' the insecurities of teen girls."

Penny snorted, choosing to be amused rather than offended, and ventured, "Could be worse. You could be a prefect. I'll trade you my two dozen for your four." I started to ask and she immediately answered, "Luna's doing fine, Harry. In fact, she and Lindquist hit it off this week bothering the ghosts. They're trying to get more people to go to Nearly-Headless Nick's deathday party next month."

"Good," I nodded, then answering Oliver's earlier complaint, "I think we're _so close_ , though. Won't help to take the weekend if we aren't sure what's going wrong with the spell."

"Fine," the obsessive keeper allowed, hardly hypocritical enough to object strenuously about others working too hard on something. He pushed back off the wall and moved to look at our diagrams. "Explain it t'me again, and maybe one of you lot of big brains will notice somethin'."

Percy and I nodded to Penny to take the lead, so she explained, "The arithmancy all checks out. We got Professor Vector to confirm. We're calling it the 'libertas' charm since it _ought_ to free people from mental influence and maybe even counter the imperius. Incantation worked out to _Libero_. That also fits the necessary arithmancy. Could be an issue with the wand movements because those are more subject to intuition than anything…" she trailed off, thinking.

I shook my head, "But I made a ritual diagram that should fit the matrix exactly, and that didn't seem to work either."

"What if we need to think happy thoughts?" Penny said, popping from her short thought process.

"Soul magic, of course!" Percy agreed. " _Libero!_ " he tried, making the wand gesture. I wasn't going to be able to contribute much practically until I had a focus. Turned out the reason my mother's necklace worked with the patronus was that the interface factors were similar to light spells. We'd had to use a different interface for the libertas. "That felt _different_ ," Percy frowned, "but still failed. I used the same memory I use for the patronus."

Possibly owing to the growth of their relationship over the summer, Percy and Penny had both finally managed fully corporeal patronus spells in the last month. To my great amusement, Percy's was a big-nosed bird that he insisted was an augurey but which reminded me a lot of the officious parrot in the _Kimba_ cartoon. Penny's was an eagle, but, in the monochrome silver of the charm, we weren't sure exactly what kind.

"What if t'isn't happy thoughts?" Oliver asked. "I've always heard you can only cast the killin' curse at someone you hate, yeah? But fiendfyre doesn't require hate?"

"Fear, I think," I admitted, nodding. "Maybe panic. I only tried it the one time, when Voldemort was trying to possess me, but I don't think hate was at the top of my list."

Penny sank down in her chair in frustration. "This could take _forever_."

"Why? How many positive emotions could there _be_?" Oliver asked.

"But you probably have to feel it _deeply_ , like with the patronus," she explained. "It'll be hard to tell if we've picked the wrong emotion or we just don't have a strong enough trigger for it."

Oliver clapped his hands together with a grin, "Still, though, progress and we're not going t'figure it out tonight, yeah? Bedtime! Hogsmeade bright and early!" With grumbling agreement, we packed up and made our way back to the Gryffindor dorms. As Oliver, Percy, and I were climbing the last set of stairs to the dorm, Oliver spoke up again and suggested, "Alright, gentlemen, tomorrow: picnic lunch with our witches."

"I don't have a–" I began.

"Harry," Oliver interrupted, stepping off onto the landing before the staircase moved. "With all respect, get your head out of your arse." Seeing he had my attention, he continued, "We're not sayin' you haveta ask the girl t' _marry_ you. But Percy and I like her," Percy nodded. "Penny and Lexi like her. _You_ like her. Stop feelin' sorry for yourself and invite the poor girl t'Hogsmeade."

" _Fine_ ," I grumbled, probably because I was a petulant teenager really set on making myself miserable about my presumed-dead ex-girlfriend, Elaine. I guessed I _could_ admit that, if any of my friends were in a similar situation, I'd be giving them the same advice Oliver was giving me.

As we entered the common room, not unlike a man heading to the gallows, I dragged my feet and finally did some thinking about my issues. Mathilda was pretty, we got along, we had shared interests, and we'd managed to work together well in a crisis. But she wasn't Elaine. And there was a part of my brain that was still holding out hope that Elaine somehow got out of the house, would someday find me, and would have a good explanation and apology. There was another part that believed I'd _killed_ Elaine, and thus did not deserve to ever be in a relationship again.

But maybe it was time to stop letting those anxieties drive my life.

I spotted Mathilda across the common room playing chess with Ron. She was losing, but the two were having an animated discussion about something else. Ron was explaining, "...if Gudgeon can improve a little, I think they can go to 8th or even 7th this season."

Mathilda shook her head, moving a pawn, and opined, "He's just too new as seeker! Chaser game, that's where they should focus! He needs a few more years. Anyway, you can't forget the fundamentals! Too many teams think they're going to win on the snitch."

Ron nodded, moving a knight into position and declaring, "I'd be good with that, too. I'm just really thinking that this is the year for another Cannonball Run, you know? Check, by the way."

"You know that name was based on a muggle movie?" she asked. "I wonder if the team even knows that's why they call their winning streaks that." She agonized over the board for a moment before taking Ron's knight with her bishop.

"Really? Harry, do you know about that?" Ron asked, noticing that I'd moved over to watch them play and eavesdrop. He moved his queen into position and noted, "Check and mate."

"Yeah, came out about a decade ago, I think," I told him. "We could probably find it on video and watch it at Remus' over the break. Supposed to be good. Burt Reynolds is in it. No quidditch, though, obviously, just cars. But similarly fast paced."

"Harry, are you inviting us to come visit over Yule?" Mathilda asked me, quirking an eyebrow.

I shrugged, "If Remus is okay with it and the schedule works, sure." She brightened, as Ron started putting away the chess pieces. Not one to miss the natural segue, I plucked up my courage and said, "But, sooner invitation: Do you want to join me for a picnic tomorrow? Will be us, Oliver and Alexis, and Penny and Percy."

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Ron start to talk, probably to explain he couldn't go to Hogsmeade yet, but then he realized I was only talking to Mathilda and closed his mouth. She gave a cute little twitch as if she was trying to play it cool, then lost the war with her facial muscles and grinned broadly, "Love to!"

"Cool. I guess we're heading into town after breakfast," I nodded, running out of suave. "See you in the morning!"

"Goodnight!" she said, as I beat a hasty retreat up to my room.

The next morning, as we were finishing up breakfast, I asked, "So… is a picnic outside of Hogsmeade _safe_?"

"Uncle Abraham's team is doing a sweep this morning," Mathilda nodded, and it looked like several of the others were also reassured by the news. "But they haven't had any trouble there since the wargs."

"I never did hear the full story about those," Alexis said. The dark-haired prefect had an almost entirely English accent, though I'd eventually found out she'd been born in France. She was a half-blood, and her family had immigrated back to England when she was little, after the war.

The fight with Greyback and the wargs, thus, became the topic of conversation for the ride down to the town. I tried not to be self-conscious about how cute everyone found it that Mathilda and I effortlessly traded off the storytelling.

Wandering around town shopping was very coupley, and I tried not to freak when Mathilda grabbed my hand to walk together several times. The picnic was nice. Oliver had arranged for a basket of food from the kitchens, Percy handled the blankets for seating on a hill outside of town, and I brought some Cokes and other snacks from my muggle stash which seemed appreciated. The conversation was light, we were all having a good time, and if everyone gradually shifted into three piles of one girl reclining on one boy, it was only natural. It was, in fact, kind of nice.

Through some unspoken signal, Oliver gathered back up the food baskets, Percy picked up the blankets, I vanished the trash, and we were all moving on slightly different paths, on separate romantic strolls. Even with the nice day for northern Scotland, it had gotten a little chilly and at some point I'd wound up with an arm around Mathilda as we walked.

"You know it's not actually haunted?" I noted, absently, as we came within sight of the Shrieking Shack on the outskirts of town. "That's just a rumor to keep people away from it. The twins say there's a secret passage from school into the shack, if you can get past the willow." Remus had given me more of his school backstory over the summer, and explained that was where he'd transform every month before Professor Belby invented the wolfsbane potion he used now. It had come up when he explained why I wasn't supposed to go near the baby willow tree he'd planted in his backyard.

"That's neat!" she agreed. "I wonder what it's like inside? Surprised more people don't use it as a makeout space." That last was a very pointed segue.

I took a breath and began, "You know I like you, right? But I still don't know if…" I trailed off.

"Are you just going with the flow, here?" she asked. "Is this all chivalry?"

"No," I assured her. "I enjoy this. But I can't make promises about anything more."

"Because you're not over your ex," she nodded. "I get it. I'm not looking for a commitment, Harry. It's okay if you don't even want to be my boyfriend. I have career plans! I'm not trying to tie you down. Merlin, _I_ may better deal _you_ as soon as I'm out of Hogwarts."

I snorted. "You should. You could do way better." I said the last joking, but asked, "So you don't mind if I'm emotionally unavailable?"

"I mean, I'd prefer if you _weren't_. But I can't say you haven't warned me for seven months." She stopped walking and turned me to look down at her. "Harry. I like you. I don't love you. You like me. You don't love me. But there's nobody I like _more_."

"Same," I admitted.

Humor vied with vulnerability in her eyes. "Then stop overthinking things and let's snog?"

"Yes, ma'am," I told her.

So we did. I didn't totally buy that she wasn't invested. I still kind of felt like I was using her. But it had been over a year since I'd had that kind of contact, and it felt long overdue. It felt so good to just be wrapped up in another, compatible person.

Of course, with my luck, it was only about a minute into making out when the yelling and spellfire started.

## An Afternoon’s Diversion

The sounds that broke up my early-afternoon makeout session with Mathilda were coming from Hogsmeade, and from our vantage on a small rise near the Shrieking Shack, I could make out faint flashes of spells and the smoke of buildings just recently on fire. The yells that carried from town sounded like fear but not like pain, and it sucked that at not-quite-17 I was able to make that distinction.

Since I was putting as much effort as possible into listening, and my hearing is, I am told, unusually effective, I also heard people talking from nearby, in the direction of the wood that contained the rath my godmother showed me how to use nearly a year before. Men's voices, trying to be quiet, one hissed, "Remember, the pureblood isn't to be permanently harmed."

"But you just need enough of Dresden for his blood, right?" another growled, and even trying to be quiet I could identify Marcus Flint. I'd certainly gotten used to his whispered threats in classes we'd shared the previous year.

"Technically living and able to bleed, yes," the first voice confirmed. It sounded older, thinner, higher class, but I didn't recognize it. I thought I saw motion against the trees that was all too similar to the stealth effect in _Predator_ : disillusionment. In the shadows of the wood, I wasn't willing to gamble that it was only two people. And I knew Flint and his friends wouldn't be able to manage veils.

Mathilda had noticed me concentrating, and didn't interrupt. If we weren't in danger, I could have kissed her again for that. I used the arm I still had wrapped around her to turn her in the direction of the threat and whispered, "Flint and at least one other wizard. Veiled. Against the wood. Not just a prank."

She nodded and growled, noticing like I was that there was at least a hundred yards between us and the town over rolling but unobstructed terrain. The people standing against the wood would have plenty of time to fire at us if we made for the town. We could go for the gate into Hogwarts, but it was a little further and we'd have the outer wall at our backs most of the way, limiting our room to run. "Try for the shack?" she asked.

"Get your wand," I said, reaching around to hug her, hoping I was being nonchalant and giving her cover to draw. I took the opportunity to use my right hand to make sure my shield bracelet was free of my sleeve on my left wrist. "Start running when you're ready, I'll cover behind you."

I turned around her so my left arm was to the wood and I was facing the shack and then let my right arm drop into my robe for my blasting rod. It was a bad day to figure I didn't need my staff. I thought I could make out a stifled guffaw from the wood, probably Flint assuming I was reaching into my pants and he was going to get to interrupt us going for third base.

Hopefully he misunderstood what was going on when she broke into a run away from me as soon as I had a hand on my rod. The focus. Sexual euphemisms in magical culture are way too easy.

There were at least three shouts of surprise as Mathilda started running toward the Shrieking Shack, and I yelled, " _Protego!_ " as I started my own run, holding the shield in between me and the wood and trying to run and watch at the same time without falling down the hill.

Three figures in black cloaks, probably uncomfortably warm to fight in on this sunny day, materialized from beneath their veils. Two were wearing white masks—a tall, thin figure holding a wand and a much burlier one wielding a two-handed axe with an enormous blade—and the third was burly and wearing a simple black balaclava mask. I assumed the third was Flint. It was all but confirmed when his voice yelled, " _Stupefy!_ " and launched a stunner that splashed off my shield before he started running.

The thinner figure seemed disinclined to run, but yelled, " _Crucio!_ " and I had to duck and roll as the red light of the curse streaked with excellent aim through where I'd been going. I hated it when the bad guys were quality marksmen.

While Flint and the thin man had been shooting at me, the guy with the axe barked, " _Ascendio!_ " and managed to launch himself into the air like his weapon was Thor's hammer or something. He seemed to be on a ballistic arc in my direction, aiming at trying to get up close and personal. And the axe was probably spelled to go through my shield.

Impressing myself with my ability to aim my blasting rod while I rolled to a stop on the ground, my shout of, " _Confrigo!_ " released a coruscating line of fire at the guy. Somehow, he swung the axe in midair and parted the blasting curse from hitting him, but that also triggered the explosion and sent him screaming like a comet away from me. He was cussing the whole way, so I doubted he was out of the fight for good.

Mathilda had made it to the house while I was rolling to a stop on the ground and she hit the door with a grunt of pain, "It's locked! _Alohomora!_ No good, spelled shut!"

I managed to roll back onto my feet quickly and without serious injury—it was much nicer to fight on grass than on cobblestones if I was going to keep making hard landings—and my shield back up before the thin man started shooting curses back at me. Fortunately, he didn't seem to have the power for an unforgivable every volley, but the ones he was sending were potent and I didn't know for sure how long I could hold the shield. I also didn't recognize most of them, so definitely didn't want to get hit.

While I backed slowly away from the threat, I realized I'd lost track of Flint and the guy with the axe. Apparently realizing on her own that I was much further behind her, Mathilda started tossing spells at my attacker. " _Flipendo! Glacius! Tarantallegra! Petrificus Totalus!_ " While they were mostly weak spells, she was getting them off at a good clip and with decent aim. My assailant had to break off his own attack to shield against any of them inconveniencing him with a hit, and that gave me a moment to drop my own shield and book it.

With the door spelled locked, I was worried that the entire shack was still a solid bastion to house a werewolf. But you could hold a werewolf in a metal cage, and the exploding charm could render that to nothing. " _Bombarda!_ " I yelled, aiming at the boarded-up windows on the side of the house that wouldn't throw Mathilda off her own attack. Thankfully, with a shudder that sounded like old spells unraveling as much as wood shattering, my blast put a sizable hole in the side of the Shrieking Shack. I got close and then turned to put my shield back up, then told her, "Get in!"

Not waiting for any other direction, Mathilda sprinted to the side of the house and nimbly leaped over the detritus that was once windows and wall. "Death Eaters now?" she yelled at me. "How many enemies do you _have_ , Harry!?"

"And I'm so likeable!" I answered, dodging another cruciatus curse from the thin man and letting a few others splash against my shield as I moved carefully into the house.

Turning to look where I was going, I caught movement to my right and realized what had happened to Flint: apparently he was in good running shape even though his sport was on a broom, and he'd managed to flank me. " _Stupefy!_ " he yelled, sending a stunner into my unprotected right side while I kept my shield up on my left against his ally.

Fortunately, I'd had time over the summer to fix my protective vest after it burned out fighting Quirrell and the magic rolled off. Honestly, his fully-powered, point-blank hit wasn't much worse than Quirrell's silent cast from down a hallway that my vest had stopped the previous year. "No wonder you always need backup," I snarked at him as I hopped into the building and out of his line of fire.

While blowing in the wall had disturbed things, my first impression of the house was that it otherwise hadn't been touched in the decade-and-a-half since Remus was a student. Clouds of dust were kicking up into the sunlight from outside, and the otherwise unlit room was full of smashed furniture and peeling wallpaper. I wondered if Mathilda would notice all the claw and chew marks throughout, but she just said, "Where's the passage?"

"See if there are stairs down?" I suggested, not honestly having any clue. "Be careful. Floors may not be safe." Some more curses from the thin man slapped against my shield and I moved to use the edge of the wall as cover as soon as Mathilda was out of the room. I wanted to send more spells out, but a lot of my energy was getting used up shielding against the onslaught.

I thought I saw movement in the distance, and it quickly resolved itself into the guy with the axe charging his way back toward the fight, stumbling slightly so at least I'd probably hurt him a little. His partner was still peppering the side of the shack with spellfire, barely having moved during the fight, so even if I had the reserves it would be hard for me to get a clean shot. And Flint was still somewhere off to what was now my left, probably maneuvering to make his own attack. I had no idea if he was strong enough to blow his own hole into the house, because, in fifth-year, the only class I'd had with him other than potions had been history, and we hadn't tried anything really powerful in DADA yet. Fortunately my tactical concerns were interrupted by Mathilda shouting, "Found it!"

Waiting for a break in the spell attacks, I retreated backward with a shield up and then ducked out of the room. I'd have loved to lock the door behind me, but it was mostly clawed apart and barely hanging onto its hinges. Moving to where I thought I'd heard her while trying to watch for attackers coming in now that I wasn't covering the exit, I spotted her out of the corner of my eye in one of the other rooms down the hallway. It really was a small house, though it had an upstairs; probably not nearly enough for a werewolf to roam around in.

"It's just a hole, not stairs!" she said, "But it seems to go back toward school." I noticed as I rushed into the room that the opened door to this one had lasted better, possibly spell protected, and looked like it had some relatively complicated latches that a transformed werewolf would have trouble undoing. And, true enough, there was a large earthen hole in the floor that wasn't exactly goblin craftsmanship but which had been worked into the floorboards as if it wasn't just a sinkhole.

"That'll do, let's go," I told her. As she hopped in, I closed the door behind me. With the increased security, and feeling some of my magical stamina coming back, I finally tried something I'd been practicing, held my mother's silver amulet, and incanted, " _Expecto Nuntius!_ " The variation on the patronus caused my dog imago to form in silver light and look at me as if waiting for a command. I told it, "Tell Dumbledore: Ms. Grimblehawk and I are trapped in the Shrieking Shack by two Death Eaters and Marcus Flint." The patronus then raced off in the general direction of the school, passing through the walls.

I absently wondered if it was heading straight for him and whether that would give enough direction to to triangulate the recipient's location.

From outside, I thought I heard the voices of our attackers, probably coordinating whether they would go into the "haunted" house and risk me nailing them with a spell from an angle they couldn't anticipate. For all that they'd apparently loved attacking people in their homes during the war, from what I'd heard the Death Eaters mostly attacked the defenseless from surprise, rather than using SWAT tactics to clear floors. Sure enough, a few moments later, I heard Flint shout, "You're trapped, Dresden! Come out or we'll burn the whole place down. Grimblehawk doesn't have to die, too!"

As much as I wanted to snark back, it would give away my position so I held my tongue like I actually had a brain in my head that could be used for something other than quips.

I moved back and started to hop into the hole before I noticed a rug shoved to the side that would be big enough to cover it. Grabbing it, the whole thing had been stiffened, probably with transfiguration, so it would cover the hole without just dropping into it as soon as any weight was placed on it. Perfect. I pulled the covering over the hole as I jumped in, so hopefully even if they started searching they wouldn't immediately notice this was a possible exit.

Mathilda already had her wand lit and was moving down a long, rough-hewn tunnel that was not nearly as nice as the one that led to Honeydukes. Dumbledore had probably just used magic to dig it and reinforce the earth so it wouldn't collapse. He also hadn't worked to make the ceiling very _high_ , so it was going to be an annoying crabwalk squeeze for my frame.

"We warned you!" Flint shouted again, very distant, and I thought I heard the all-too-familiar growl of a fiendfyre imago set loose. While we were probably safe in an underground tunnel, I didn't want to risk it and started hustling down toward Mathilda.

Realizing I didn't want Dumbledore to take risks thinking he was saving us from fire, I sent another quick messenger patronus to him, "We're safe in the tunnel. I think they cast fiendfyre into the shack." I then had to slump against the tunnel as I got lightheaded. "Woah. Okay, that's enough powerful magic for the day."

It probably took five minutes to reach the end of the tunnel, which was obvious from the sunlight streaming in and picking out all the willow roots running around it. "Uh. Harry. How are we going to avoid getting _whomped_?" Mathilda asked as she realized we were stuck under the most ornery tree on campus.

I was about to tell her I had no idea, when a silvery phoenix flew through the tunnel wall and said, in Dumbledore's voice, "Things are under control here. There's a knot on the willow that you can press to halt the branches."

"Well, there you go," I told her.

"Found it!" she said, a few moments later. I pulled myself out of the hole behind her and noted where she'd pressed. The branches _did_ seem still in a way that wasn't just malevolent anticipation. We still watched them warily and hurried out from the eaves of the tree and back toward the castle.

As soon as we were clear, the last of both of our adrenaline wore off, and we kind of collapsed together, my arm over her shoulder and hers around my back. It wasn't exactly clear which of us was using the other for support. "You alright?" I asked.

"I think so. That's getting _easier_ ," she complained. "I feel like it shouldn't get easier."

"Stick with me, and you'll be the most blasé new recruit the magical creatures department has ever had," I told her. "Or... you'll die." I said the last as enough of a joke that we both started giggling uncontrollably about it, though in the back of my mind I _was_ worried about how much danger she'd been in because of me.

Apparently the headmaster had sent a message to McGonagall to make sure we were okay. When she found us, stumbling as if drunk and laughing uncontrollably, she gave us a once over, seemed to realize we were just exhausted and loopy but not hurt, and gave one of her classic affectionate scoffs of, "Gryffindors."

## Fireside Chat

I'd been set up by myself in an empty classroom while everyone was debriefed, sitting by the fire that was already burning even though it was relatively nice outside. Scotland and stone buildings were _weird_. Weird and cold.

I hadn't even thought Hogwarts had the desks that were physically attached to the chairs like in American schools, but this classroom was full of them, and I'd grabbed one that had been pushed up against the wall and dragged it over as a place to sit. The class was on the wrong side of the building from the sun, so even though it was only late afternoon more of the light in the room was probably coming from the fireplace than the dusty old windows.

The door opened and a young woman in auror robes pushed her way in. She was tall, pretty, and had pink hair in a punk style that seemed much more intentional than Professor Belby's. The color clashed badly with the scarlet combat robes that seemed to be what the "uniform" aurors wore. "Wotcher, Dresden. Auror Moody will be with you in a minute. He's almost done taking your friend's statement. I'm Auror-Apprentice Tonks," she told me.

Of course it would be Moody, because Dumbledore would have invited one of his auror friends in to deal with the situation. Though this girl hadn't been at the summer party, she definitely had the vibe of someone who'd fit in there. "Pull up a desk," I nodded to her. As she did, dragging the desk to face me from about six feet away, I pointed out, "Mad-Eye sends you in to soften people up before he scares them, right?"

She laughed as she sat down, seeming to have a bit of trouble figuring out her feet and sliding a little clumsily into the chair. "Probably so. With keen insights like that into the auror mindset, I can see why you're Dawlish's white whale."

I raised an eyebrow, more at an auror admitting to disagreements in the ranks, but covered it with, "Didn't know they covered _Moby Dick_ at Hogwarts." In fact, I was pretty sure they _didn't_ cover it. I only knew about it from years of regular school.

"They don't. My father's muggleborn," she explained with a shrug. "He insisted that I know the classics."

I wasn't sure whether she was deliberately giving away information to build trust, or if she just didn't realize it was a big deal. I knew Dawlish would have been screaming at her for letting his number one suspect learn so much, so fast. Maybe she was just friendly. But despite having a friendly, very pretty girl who had the kind of punk aesthetic that nerds like me were powerless against, my libido was _not_ interested.

Initially thinking that it was something to do with my recent death-defying bonding experience with my definitely-not-a-girlfriend Mathilda, I realized that wasn't the feeling at all. If I gave her long, black hair, aged her several years, and imagined her laughing like a maniac…

"I can't imagine the Blacks were too happy about that," I guessed.

"Ooh, yeah, you _are_ dangerously observant," she agreed with the other aurors that had warned her about me. "And, no, mum was disowned and blasted off the family tapestry. Screw 'em."

I nodded and said, "Right on." I considered both that it might be fun to bring up her punk-rock half-blood probably-niece to my godmother the next time I saw her, and that Auror Tonks should be the last person in the universe to know who my godmother _was_.

Suddenly, the door to the room slammed open, as Mad-Eye Moody hit it with his shoulder. The peg-legged auror shouted out " _Incarcerous! Stupefy!_ " as he waved his wand through the motions.

Half expecting it, but still not having a great way to dodge, I had a split second to realize my shield might not work well against the cloud of ropes that was heading at me and so I waited until they were almost on me and raised my right hand in an uppercut while invoking, " _Diffindo!_ " The ropes sheared into pieces and dissipated to the severing charm.

I thought I'd then have to shield against the stunner, but it had actually been directed at Tonks, who managed to duck but then tipped the desk over onto herself. She still had a wand out and pointed at Moody from the floor, however. The deranged auror barked out a laugh, and sheathed his wand. "Constant vigilance! You both pass. Though your seating choice was terrible, Dresden, and you still need to figure out how to dodge without winding up on the floor, Tonks."

"Alastor Moody!" the assistant headmistress objected in her thick Scottish brogue, far enough behind him that she hadn't been able to stop the aggressive test.

"Minerva McGonagall!" he snarked back at her, clearly not threatened. He was probably old enough that he'd never been her student, really lowering the intimidation factor she was used to having over Hogwarts graduates.

Tonks righted herself back into the desk and McGonagall quietly summoned one of the other desks and transfigured it into a regular chair—though one that looked more comfortable than it had been—and sat on the other side of the fire from me. Moody stayed standing, leaning against the wall just inside the door far enough to my left that I couldn't easily watch both him and Tonks. The trainee auror pulled a roll of parchment from her robe pocket and produced a quill that set to floating over the page.

"Alright, let's get this started. Dicta-quill recording is proceeding overseen by Auror-Apprentice Nymphadora Tonks," I caught a grimace of annoyance from her at revealing her full name. I had to agree that it was a bummer of a first name, unless you wanted to get into adult entertainment as a career. "Auror Alastor Moody interviewing underaged witness Harry Dresden. Minerva McGonagall is here _in loco parentis_ for this interview." Getting a nod from Tonks that the quill was recording correctly, he began, "Mr. Dresden, please describe the events of this afternoon in Hogsmeade environs in your own words and to the best of your recollection."

I didn't have to hold anything back, surprisingly. I thought about amending that I'd cast the blasting curse at the guy with the axe, but he'd clearly survived. If Dawlish was doing the interview, it might have been a problem. But, then, Mathilda might have mentioned it and I'd be in trouble for lying. Otherwise, I didn't think I'd done anything illegal other than _maybe_ breaking and entering and vandalism blowing a hole in the shack. It was a weird feeling to not have something I was worried would get me sent to Azkaban.

As I finished up with exiting the tunnel under the willow, Moody nodded, "This concludes the interview." As Tonks put away the quill and started rolling up the scroll of testimony, he grumbled, "First thing, Minerva, you need to seal up that tunnel. It worked out this time, but secret passages into the school are a huge problem. And now there's not even a house on the other end."

"The shack burned down?" I asked, not having been given any real information.

"Yeah, total loss," Moody confirmed. "At least the bunch attacking the town didn't use fiendfyre like your lot, just regular fire-making charms. Albus had enough trouble running off the Death Eaters waiting for you to blow your way out of the shack to escape the fire to actually try to do more than contain it there."

"Running off?" I asked. "They got away?"

"Apparated out as soon as they realized Albus was on the field," he growled. "Bloody cowards. Left Flint holding the bag."

"What about the people attacking town?" I asked, glad, at least, that they'd caught Flint.

"Imperiused. Three of the regulars at the Hog's Head. Didn't take _much_ to convince them to go on a drunken spree, but they'll probably walk. Whole thing was pretty much just a distraction so they could go after _you_. That American hotshot, Meyers, _did_ manage to help keep everyone safe."

There was a knock at the door, then Dumbledore entered. "I have just finished suspending Mr. Flint, pending expulsion," he said, sadly. Seeing the relaxed atmosphere, he swished his wand and conjured up a plush armchair to sit in.

"That's probably all that'll stick," Moody pointed out. "He doesn't have anything worse than stunners in his wand, and even if what Dresden overheard will make it into evidence, he'll claim he was imperiused."

I growled at the injustice of how easy it was to put me in prison while people like Flint skated free as a pureblood. Then I realized something important from our recent diagramming of the curse, and explained, "You can only manage one imperius at a time. There'd need to be at least two more Death Eaters if Flint and three guys from town were cursed."

That actually caught Dumbledore's attention, and he nodded, "There may be one more regardless. Mr. Flint had no such curse in his wand, and, based on his OWLs, is likely incapable of casting it to begin with." He shared a look with Moody and glanced at the trainee. "Ms. Tonks, I know that Alastor has broached certain topics with you previously… now is the time to decide whether you wish to be read further into those topics."

Tonks blushed slightly at the headmaster's regard, and then nodded, "My parents never believed it was all over. If nothing else, we've been worried for years that my aunt is still at large," I tried to hide a wince at that and hoped everyone else was paying attention to Tonks and not me. "It's not much of a leap to figure that You-Know-Who may just have been injured rather than killed and is finally making a comeback."

Dumbledore nodded and continued, "Indeed. I was attacked to try to obtain my blood a few months ago, and now Mr. Dresden was attacked for the same reason. We believe it was for a ritual using an enemy's blood. And, while I would like a copy of the memory to confirm, I am fairly certain that one of the assailants was the same man that attacked me, Walden Macnair."

"Would fit with the axe," Moody confirmed.

"And the thin man?" I asked.

"It could be one of several, unfortunately," the headmaster shrugged. "The Death Eater masks obscure enough of the wearer's voice that your memory may not even narrow it down much. Macnair is obvious only from being one of the few focus casters like yourself that were ever part of the organization's elite."

"Flint didn't know who they were?"

Moody scoffed, "Not that he said, but I'd bet galleons their operational security is tight enough that they didn't _need_ to tell him. He didn't need much of a push to try to do you in, Dresden. Apparently you've made an impression. From what we can figure talking to people, seems likely someone in _Slytherin_ heard him complaining about you and wrote home to somebody about it. He was probably thrilled when a couple guys in cloaks showed up planning to off you and offered him a chance to join in." He frowned for a second, then added, "And there're so many snakes in that dorm with Death Eater relatives, it could still be anybody."

Dumbledore mused, "But the suggestion that there was a _third_ individual that was willing to imperius someone but _not_ attack Mr. Dresden might be a useful avenue of inquiry." He looked at me, "Now, Harry, you will be of-age before the next Hogsmeade weekend, so I cannot actually forbid you to go.

"However, I suggest that you, perhaps, stay with groups as much as possible and retain your situational awareness that served you in good stead today." He took a breath, then actually _twinkled_ , "I understand this is a bit of a sacrifice that might make your _romantic escapades_ more difficult."

McGonagall, who I'd almost forgotten was sitting behind me, quietly harrumphed.


	21. Dark Room 7: Birthday Surprise

## Birthday Surprise

The next few weeks rushed past as I settled into a groove. Gryffindor was excited that Flint had gotten expelled, even if it meant pushing the match with Slytherin to November since they had two new players to train up. My miscellaneous extracurriculars with the lower-years filled in time, and I was actually doing homework (to McGonagall's great surprise), since the material was finally _interesting_ to me.

But I still kept an eye on the looming end of October, because my birthday was extra special. "What kept you?" Mathilda asked as I entered the Gryffindor common room on the morning of the 31st, after giving me a long birthday kiss.

I checked to make sure nobody else was paying close attention and said, "I waited until everyone else was out of the room so I could get Bob to confirm the Trace broke." My likely-illegal spirit assistant had, indeed, given me a clean bill of health on that or any other tracking spells before going back to sleep. "No more surprise visits from Dawlish for just using magic in the world!"

She grinned mischievously and grabbed my arm, ready to head to breakfast. "Wasteful. I figured later we'd let Bob watch your birthday present. Build up some credit." Because she had my arm, she was able to keep me moving at only a slight stumble. "Still can, though. I need help on an essay!"

The previous year's lack of attention to my birthday hadn't really been a fluke: students were discouraged from making a big deal about them, because with the number of students in the school it was someone's birthday almost every day and it could get out of hand (and also make the kids that didn't get a big deal made feel left out). But small, _private_ celebrations weren't out of the question, and Mathilda was clearly implying that her plan would be of a lot of interest to my lecherous, voyeuristic research assistant.

Despite the slow but distinct buildup over the last month, we were still very clear that I wasn't her boyfriend. But the logical, inquisitive part of my mind that resisted my self-deception and denial assured me that I was _definitely_ her boyfriend.

The day was a Saturday, so even by breakfast everyone was extra keyed up for a day of fun followed by the Halloween feast. "We're actually making it to the feast this year," I assured Hermione by yelling down the Gryffindor table, who grinned.

"No trolls!" the bushy-haired girl crossed her fingers. Seamus, Neville, and Ron voiced their own agreement with that sentiment.

"Is anyone attending Sir Nicholas' deathday party?" Percy asked.

"Didn't Penny say at least two of her kids were?" I asked.

He nodded, remembering that Luna and the weird kid that had a way with ghosts, Lindquist, were involved. "Should we encourage any Gryffindors to go? He _is_ our house ghost."

I thought about who to put on the spot, then grinned, shouting down the table, "Hey, Colin? Did you get your camera sorted to take magic photos?"

The bubbly first-year gave me a thumbs up and bumped several of his classmates in his struggle to get out of his seat and run down to our end of the table to show me. "Look! It's not just the film, but Professor Babbling helped me put the runes on the lens that makes it work."

I nodded, spotting the delicate runework that was the professor's contribution. I'd probably have Colin at my enchanting demonstrations before too long. "Want to document Sir Nicholas' 500th anniversary of death tonight? Luna will be there. And it's in the dungeons so you might find a good darkroom."

We all watched him agonize over missing the feast, but then he realized he was doing us all a favor and nodded, "I'll go. I already found a darkroom, though. Hey Luna!" he shouted, running over to the Ravenclaw table to make sure he could go with her. I noticed that they eventually looked like they were trying to convince Ginny to go with them, too.

The other highlight of the day was defense tutoring. Lockhart's class wasn't as bad as I'd feared. The few times I'd noted issues and planned to talk to him about it, it hadn't been necessary. He schooled me in a duel for a couple hours, told me he figured I and therefore the rest of the class was ready in his self-aggrandizing way, and then the issues were resolved in subsequent classes. We'd gotten a lot of in-class dueling time, and we were working on wordless casting. I was also working on more focus-less spells that I could actually use in a fight.

While he seemed to be comfortable with the sixth-year curriculum, he was more uneven with the younger kids. So the weekend tutoring from Dumbledore's friends was aiming to fill those gaps. On Halloween, it was Frank Longbottom's turn, and Percy, Alexis, and I were helping as teacher's assistants for a session with the second-years. Oliver would have loved to come, but he was a week away from the rescheduled Slytherin match and was drilling his quidditch team into the ground.

That morning was accuracy against a moving target. The older kids got to be the moving target.

I wound up with Hermione, Seamus, Neville, and Ron, and Percy and Alexis each had three kids of their own. I didn't mind it that much, because I needed the practice dodging. I was also getting a workout doing without foci, and trying to use shield charms with my bare hands.

The kids' styles were interesting, watching from inside their semicircular firing line (lesson _one_ was how likely you were to hit your friends when you had the target _completely_ surrounded). Hermione got her spells to work every time and they packed a punch, but she needed to work on speed and accuracy. Seamus was actually kind of a terror with his half-finished blasting rod, throwing out fast and heavy gouts of flame that I really needed to watch out for, but his accuracy was awful and obviously he could only cast the one thing. Neville's spells had hardly any force behind them, but he could get quite a few downrange with good accuracy.

And Ron… I called a timeout when I finally realized what was bugging me.

"Hey, Ron, your accuracy is really good, but are you getting tired faster than everyone else?" I asked. Neville's dad had wandered over, curious what I was asking them about.

Ron shrugged and nodded, "Yeah. I'm trying to throw them hard enough to get through your shields, so I put a lot of power into it."

My eyes narrowed, so Mr. Longbottom asked, "Did you notice something, Mr. Dresden?"

"It's hard to explain." I thought out loud, "When Ron's spells hit my shield, it's like there's a bunch of secondary hits around the core of the spell. Feels like residue or something. More focused than when I cast them without a tool, but more spread out than any other wanded spells I've seen."

The pureblooded auror thought for a second, then asked, "Ron, did you get your wand from Ollivanders?"

The boy shrugged, then explained, "Sort of. Charlie got it there before he went to school, but he had to get matched for one with a dragon heartstring when he got his job. The dragons are supposed to be easier to work with if you have one of those. So I got it from him."

I groaned quietly and Mr. Longbottom sighed, muttered something to himself that didn't sound particularly charitable to Arthur and Molly Weasley, then nodded. "Well spotted, Mr. Dresden. Ron, I'm going to talk to your parents about getting you a better-matched wand. You will likely have a _much_ easier time casting once you have one."

"You think?" the boy exclaimed, hopeful. "That would be brilliant!"

Neville nodded, "I tried to use dad's wand once, and could barely get it to do anything. You have to be properly matched. Harry was explaining it to us during one of his enchanting seminars. If your wand isn't exactly right, you get messed up spell matrices when you cast."

I nodded at the boy, and Hermione beamed that he'd gotten it so right that she didn't have to add anything. Of course she did _anyway_. I tuned out while the girl gave her friends more information than they ever wanted to know about wandlore.

Walking down to lunch, I let the kids get ahead and asked, Percy, "I know things are tight at home, man, but wands are only, what, seven galleons? That's like 60 bucks. _I_ could afford to get Ron a new wand."

He admitted, guiltily, "Yes. Thrift becomes a habit, and hand-me-downs too much of a rule. Mother was very unhappy when Charlie needed a second new wand. Only your _first_ wand is subsidized by the Ministry down to seven galleons, and he needed Ollivander to make something bespoke to get a dragon heartstring wand that would work for him on top of that. Mother got it into her head that passing his old one to Ron would slightly mitigate the cost."

"It's not fair to Ron," I told him. "Sounds like he never gets anything that's just his, not even the most important thing for him to do well at school."

Percy grimaced. I knew he'd had his own history of hand-me-downs from his two older brothers, though fewer than Ron got. "I will write to my parents. Charlie as well. He sends money home when he can, but he is likely making enough now that he could at least buy Ron a new wand, if not pay back the cost of the bespoke one."

I nodded, happy about that. I still suggested, "And, hey, if you tell Ron it's a present for working harder at school the last few months, maybe he'll get into his head that academic excellence is rewarded."

Lunch was calm, and then Mathilda and I went off to find a comfortable abandoned classroom for the afternoon. Second base was a very exciting adventure. I absently wondered if the wizarding world had an equivalent quidditch metaphor for the muggle baseball one. Catching the snitch was an obvious match for a home run, but I was at a loss for the intermediate steps. Something about bludgers?

Also, she'd actually been _serious_ about bringing Bob along. The skull was going to be _insufferable_.

Fortunately, nobody locked themselves in a bathroom this time, so I was able to attend the feast, pointedly ignoring the amused looks from my roommates about where I'd been all afternoon. "Where's Filch?" I asked absently, noticing the gap at the staff table.

"He usually skips the feasts, I think," Percy supplied. "I believe he does not care for the noise."

"Nah, that's Pince," Oliver noted the other absent staff seat. "Filch hates seein' kids happy."

"C'mon, man," I told him. "He's making an effort, despite nobody giving him any respect."

Oliver grinned, "He's just nice t'you because you get along with his cat. She's always had it in for me, though. But, seriously, I think he's patrolin' t'make sure no kids are hidin' in bathrooms."

I nodded. "Hopefully the elves will make sure he gets something to eat." That reminded me and I glanced down our table and over at the Ravenclaw table, I didn't see Colin, Ginny, or Luna, though I wasn't totally sure which Ravenclaw Lindquist was. "Deathday party guests, too. Hopefully they make it back before the feast is over."

While I was having a great time, as the dinner got close to winding down I got increasingly worried that the kids were going to miss it, especially since I'd basically forced young Colin to go. Mathilda noticed me keeping an eye on the doors and said, "Why don't we go check?"

I smiled and gave her hand a squeeze and told everyone, "We're going to go see if we can rescue some first-years from a dead man's party. Save us dessert?" I carefully extracted my legs and my staff from underneath the bench, helped Mathilda up, and headed out.

We'd only gotten a little ways out the door and down toward the dungeons when a running Colin said, "Harry! Something's wrong with Mr. Filch!" We took off at a run following the small boy, who had to hold his enormous camera to his chest so it wouldn't knock him unconscious as he charged down the corridors.

Sure enough, we found Luna standing guard over a collapsed Filch in the middle of one of the underground corridors. "What happened?" I asked.

"We found him like this," Luna explained when a winded Colin couldn't get it out. "Mortimer stayed at the deathday party, and we don't know any spells to revive him."

Mathilda did some kind of diagnostic charm while I was physically taking his pulse, and we both agreed that he was just, thankfully, unconscious. "Where's Ginny?" I asked.

"Grossed out," Colin managed to cough out as he got his breath back. "Rotting food. Left early to go shower."

"Something attacked him through his wrist," Luna pointed.

Taking the little maybe-seer's word for it, I lifted his hand, though his arm moved stiffly for someone who was stunned, and found the bracelet I'd made for him for Christmas was burned. I had a bad feeling about this. Touching him with my staff, I incanted, " _Rennervate!_ "

For a moment, I didn't think it was going to work, but then he coughed and started looking around, frightened. He finally noticed me and groaned, "Yellow eyes! Something attacked Mrs. Norris! She was keeping an eye on the girls' toilets. I think she was on the second floor!"

His panic was infectious. Also, I liked that cat better than I liked him. I helped him stand and we all started running back upstairs, the hunchbacked old man picking up speed as whatever had affected him wore off and he grew increasingly worried. It made sense that something had happened to his familiar, since the bracelet was designed to improve his bond to her.

As we passed into the entry hall and made for the main stairs, Mathilda said, "I'll get a professor! Right behind you! Don't get in a fight, Harry!"

"I'll try very hard!" I told her as she broke from the group and headed into the dining hall. I didn't realize that Luna and Colin were still at our heels until it was already too late to send them back. "You two! Be careful and run if we tell you."

All of us were completely exhausted by the time we'd run halfway across the castle, and it probably wasn't ideal for a fight. Fortunately or unfortunately, we were way too late. Torchlight glistened on a large puddle across the corridor, and above it was Mrs. Norris' body hung from the torch bracket and casting grotesque shadows in the flickering firelight. Mr. Filch collapsed to his knees in anguish upon spotting her.

Above her, scrawled in large letters of glistening red:

THE REIGN OF MUDBLOODS AND BLOOD TRAITORS IS OVER. THE HEIR HAS RECLAIMED HIS BIRTHRIGHT! THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS IS OPEN ONCE MORE.

## A Little Something about Courage

"Someone killed Mrs. Norris!" Filch growled from the floor, raising his eyes to look at the bloody tableau, his shock quickly turning into rage. His familiar still hung beneath a torch bracket, surrounded by large red letters proclaiming a war against non-purebloods.

I put my hand on his shoulder as he tried to surge forward to grab her, "It's a crime scene! We can't touch it until Dumbledore gets a look or we might not know who did this." He almost pulled loose anyway, but then nodded and turned his head away.

"Besides, she's still alive, like you were," Luna explained. "Though the nargles don't seem to like her as much like this."

"She's just stunned?" Filch asked, his voice breaking in hope as he turned back.

"Slightly more than stunned," I said, noting that she appeared rigid rather than slumped. Colin's camera snapped as he took pictures of the writing. Filch looked ready to bite the boy's head off, but was still so happy his cat was alive that he visibly restrained himself. Colin didn't notice, and when he was moving to take another shot I told him, "Maybe just the one photo, okay buddy?"

The boy looked up at us, saw Filch's expression and looked contrite. "Sorry, Mr. Filch. I just wanted to get a picture for evidence."

Nodding at that explanation, the caretaker allowed, "Very well, then. Take more. I want whoever did this expelled. Or worse."

Not long after Colin snapped a few more angles of photographs, Mathilda rushed up with McGonagall and Dumbledore not far behind, and Professor Kettleburn clopping down the hall on his prosthetic legs at a slower pace. Though they'd probably tried to keep the students in the dining hall, a surge of a couple dozen curious kids were clearly keeping their distance but moving down to see what had three professors rushing out of the feast.

"Oh, my," Dumbledore exhaled, taking in the scene. "Ms. Grimblehawk informed me that you found Argus in a similar state."

"May have been feedback from the familiar bond charms I made them," I admitted.

The headmaster nodded, flicking his wand in a series of gestures that I thought were healer diagnostics, though some seemed even more esoteric. Smiling as he finished, he spoke a simple, " _Mollio,_ " and Mrs. Norris twitched and then slipped down to the ground, landing on her feet. "I daresay that charm prevented a more serious injury by allowing a small part of the effect to bleed across to Argus."

Filch was already crossing the floor to pick up the revived cat and sobbing in relief. He walked her back and I gave the poor girl a couple of scritches as well. "It was just the body-bind curse?" I asked, having recognized the specific countercharm.

"Perhaps," the headmaster considered, but then allowed, "or perhaps not. The effect was very _like_ it, but much stronger than a student could cast as a prank. It was sufficiently close that the counter had a similar mollifying effect. Argus, you saw _yellow eyes_?"

The caretaker nodded, fixing his own eyes on Kettleburn, who'd finally trundled up the hall. "Yes. And if it was a creature, I want it executed. If it was students playing a prank, I want them hung up by their _thumbs_."

McGonagall looked disgusted at the writing and agreed. "If someone thought that such an action was a simple prank, they will find themselves _sorely mistaken_."

"For now, I think we can consider ourselves fortunate that more harm wasn't done," Dumbledore suggested. With a wave of his wand, he attempted to clean off the wall, but the writing stayed put against his spell. "Curious." With another wave of his wand, he conjured a simple tapestry, though in an eye-watering light purple, to cover the wall. "I shall attempt more thorough measures later."

The assistant headmistress nodded at the action. "Though I'm sure the rumors will be loose, the students don't need to see that every time they pass." She fixed the approaching crowd of kids from the dining hall with a stare and raised her voice, "Especially those who were not invited to satisfy their curiosity!"

With a range from fear to belated acceptance, the kids dispersed. At the back, I was somewhat surprised to notice Draco, his bookends, and Nott—the smaller Slytherin boy from his year—muttering to each other before heading back.

"I shall investigate more thoroughly, but I think all of the students have played their part and may return to their dormitories," Dumbledore suggested. "Five points to each of you for cooperation and good sense. And an additional ten points to Mr. Dresden for clever enchanting."

Filch nodded his own thanks, and I just gave him a return nod and Mrs. Norris another scritch. "I think Luna and Colin missed dinner because they were at Sir Nicholas' party?" I asked, and they nodded.

"I'll have food sent to your dormitories," McGonagall acknowledged with a slight smile.

Dismissed, the four of us left the adults to puzzle over the situation. "Let's drop Luna at Ravenclaw?" I suggested, since their tower wasn't that far out of our way toward our own dorm and we probably shouldn't leave a first-year wandering alone after an attack. Once we were out of earshot of the professors, I asked, "So what's a Chamber of Secrets?"

"Slytherin's monster," Mathilda immediately answered, quick on anything that related to magizoology. "It's a hidden room in the castle. Supposedly. Salazar Slytherin hid a horror there. One day his heir could unleash it. It would, well, force anyone who wasn't a pureblood out of Hogwarts."

"I'll write to Daddy and see if he knows anything else," added Luna.

"So if it's true, and it's a monster with yellow eyes that basically petrifies people…" I thought out loud. "We're looking at, what, medusa, basilisk, or cockatrice?"

Luna and Mathilda glanced at me as if I'd grown a second head, and Mathilda asked, "Why'd you jump to those three? There have to be a ton of possibilities."

I shrugged, "Those are the classic three that petrify people, at least in _Arcanos_." Seeing that didn't clear up anything for the two girls, though Colin looked like it sounded vaguely familiar to him, I explained, "It's a muggle fantasy game, but it draws a lot on mythology." Admittedly, I hadn't actually had enough friends that I'd _played_ the role-playing game, but I'd spent a lot of time hanging around all day treating comic book shops and bookstores like libraries, and they'd frequently had game sections.

My sort-of-girlfriend thought about it and said, "If it's that accurate, I should get uncle Abraham to buy some copies…" The Grimblehawks had a scam where they got the Ministry to pay for them to watch muggle fantasy movies to make sure the muggles "weren't breaching the Statute of Secrecy."

"Daddy might be very interested as well," Luna nodded. I wondered what kind of conspiracy theories the _Quibbler_ would get out of the popular game. We dropped her at the Ravenclaw door and then headed back to Gryffindor.

Colin was excited to find a personal dinner plate waiting for him at one of the study tables in the common room, and while he was distracted by the meal, Mathilda suggested, "Bob?"

I nodded. The skull definitely owed for the show we'd put on that afternoon. We slipped up to my dorm room, made sure nobody was there, and Mathilda threw up a few locking and privacy spells. We'd learned it was faster for her to do it with her wand than for me to do it without a focus. She even finished with the spell that was in my potions book that turned speech outside of the bubble into a buzzing white noise.

Fishing Bob out of my trunk, we quickly caught him up on what had just happened, and our theories. When we'd finished, he said, "I don't know, Harry. None of those are a very good candidate for a thousand-year-old monster."

I shared a look of annoyance with Mathilda, and asked, "Why?"

"Well, taking it in order of least likely," the skull explained, "cockatrices are right out. They don't live nearly long enough and they're too dumb to use as a weapon.

"Basilisk would be a _maybe_ if the timespan was a little less. But the one that lasted longest that I know of made it about half as long as you'd need, and that one was on a pretty strict diet."

"Diet?" Mathilda asked, right before I could.

"They're a ritually-constructed creature, so they don't really have the normal biological safeguards," he elaborated. "If you leave one to eat, it will just eat and eat until it gets so big it can't maintain its mass or its magic anymore. Most of the ones released into the wild that survive top out in under a century before they start having to eat through whole forests and wind up getting close to population centers, at which point someone finally takes them out."

"Stasis in the chamber?" I suggested.

Bob gave an eyeroll, the points of flame flickering up into his eye sockets. "I mean, I guess you _could_ put a barely-stable mutant snake that's nearly immune to magic into a stasis field that held up for centuries without anyone noticing the massive drain on the Hogwarts ley lines…"

"Fine," I huffed. "Medusas?"

" _Gorgons_ ," he corrected me. "I guess it's _possible_ , but I can't even confirm whether they exist or are just a myth. But I don't know if some snake-haired lady with her own hopes and dreams is going to sit in a hole for centuries waiting for somebody to show up and say, 'Hey, Sal was my many-greats granddad, and I need you to help me kill a cat.'

"Besides, Sal wouldn't have left a monster in the school anyway."

"You knew Salazar Slytherin!?" Mathilda squealed.

"Well, not _personally_. But the wizard who made my skull was a colleague, or at least claimed to be. The way I heard it, Sal wasn't a blood purist, he was tired of muggles getting brainwashed assassin kids selected as apprentices. In the early days, for every muggleborn kid that was killed for accidental magic there was another one taken by the local lord and raised to be a perfect little stooge.

"Most of the muggleborns that got into Hogwarts were planning to learn what they could before going back to a cushy gig as a court magician. A few of them were Trojan Horsed in to try to help their patrons subjugate the school. And since Sal was the school strategist, the first thing they'd want to do is take him out. His deal was more, 'Could we please stop admitting muggleborns until we can ensure they're not going to try to sell us out or kill us?'"

"Oaths or legilimency?" Mathilda asked.

"Later development," Bob countered. "That's the other thing you have to keep in mind. Everyone is very excited about how great the Hogwarts founders were, but magical technology _develops_. You teach _kids_ spells that Sal would have needed to do as a long ritual, if he could do it at all."

"So you don't think he would have left a monster to purify the school?" I summed up.

"He could have left some kind of safeguard against more brainwashed assassin kids," Bob admitted. "But, again, magical innovation. It would be like finding a black powder musket that Charlemagne squirreled away as a deterrent. You'd both be very impressed that he had that technology early, certain that it would have been deadly to his opponents, completely shocked if it still worked at all these days, and not that bothered by it even if it still somehow worked _perfectly_."

"Fine," I said, trying to drag things back on topic, "whether or not it's actually Slytherin's monster, something with yellow eyes froze the cat. If it's not a thousand years old it could be any of the things I mentioned?"

"Well, all of those turn you to actual stone, not just paralyze you," Bob explained. "Theoretically for the gorgon, actually for the cockatrice and the basilisk."

"Anything with yellow eyes that just paralyzes?" I asked.

Bob thought for a second, then admitted, "Not that doesn't do it through venom or poison."

"Dumbledore used a softening countercurse, though. Wouldn't work as an antivenom," Mathilda disagreed.

"True," the skull confirmed. "Could be a weakened effect."

"Because of the familiar bond?" I asked.

"Partly," he acknowledged. "But that might have just made it counterable. Indirect exposure, maybe, like a reflection."

"The puddle!" Mathilda and I said at the same time, then grinned at each other.

"Wait," I said after my brain caught up. "The whole Perseus myth. He specifically used the reflection in his shield to watch her so he _wouldn't_ get petrified by Medusa."

"The reflectivity of an ancient Greek shield wouldn't be very good," Bob explained. "And if it was made of yellow brass or bronze…"

It took me a few seconds to think it through, and then I grinned, "It might not reflect whatever magic light is being emitted from yellow eyes!"

## It's Not Safe to Go Alone

Despite my research, Hogwarts was having a hard time taking things seriously. I'd basically browbeaten every Gryffindor into being cautious just in case there _was_ a medusa blood purist running around, but it was clear they were only doing it to humor me. Penny and Luna were on board, but having a hard time convincing the rest of Ravenclaw there was a problem. I mentioned it to Draco, but obviously there were few people in Slytherin that thought they'd be in danger even if Slytherin's monster was running around. And I didn't even really know anyone in Hufflepuff well enough to convince them it could be an issue, though I mentioned it to kids I had classes with.

Most people seemed to think it was just a prank done in poor taste.

By the next weekend, people were more interested in the rescheduled quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin than they were any potential danger. Both teams had new seekers. As a reward for earning his place on the team as seeker, Draco's father had bought the whole team top-of-the-line brooms, which seemed unfair. Well, it seemed unfair that the school would allow so much variation in equipment. Quidditch really was a stupid sport.

Gryffindor was only fielding one new player to Slytherin's two, which should have been important. But I wasn't sure, given how dumb the seeker position was, that Draco's high-tech broom wouldn't be decisive against Ginny's borrowed broom. Slytherin had replaced Flint with some fourth-year named Warrington, who looked even bigger than Flint.

For all the various imbalances, it actually wound up being a pretty interesting game. I was obviously not an aficionado, but the Gryffindor chasers seemed to work better together now that Katie was there with her friends, and they scored a decent array of goals based on skill rather than speed. Meanwhile, when the Slytherins had the quaffle, they just leaned on being a fast-moving wall of meat, though Fred and George showed them a few times that angry cannonballs didn't care if you were burly.

Draco seemed to be sticking close to Ginny, trusting that he'd easily be able to beat her to the snitch from the same spot as soon as either of them saw it. As they drifted over near enough to where I was sitting to hear them over the noise of the crowd, I could make out that the boy was maintaining a litany of insults, some of them that would be inappropriate for an adult film. "DRACO!" I shouted, and when his eyes flicked my way I yelled, "Don't be a dick!"

He flushed slightly, and they both drifted off, but it seemed like the torrent of abuse stopped and both of the kids spent more time keeping their mouths shut and paying attention. The game went on for a good while after that, and I was actually sort of getting into it, a vision of what it could be like if it was just a game about scoring goals. Gryffindor was up very slightly when suddenly Ginny, from above the crowd, shouted, "My broom!" and started to fall, the charms having seemingly cut out entirely. I didn't think she'd shouted loud enough for the rest of her team to hear, but Draco certainly had.

The boy was paralyzed with indecision for a few crucial moments, unsure if he should try to help or not. She was far enough away that I wasn't sure if I could catch her with a spell, but while I was paying close attention to her to figure out what to do, I noticed a grin stretch across her face. By the time the rest of the team noticed what was going on, let alone other Gryffindors in the stands, she'd managed to point the broom downwards and was clearly flying instead of falling.

In the two seconds before Draco realized he'd been played, the Weasley's youngest was already at least a hundred feet below him (if my understanding of gravity acceleration checks out). His rocket ship of a broom nearly made up the distance, but she still clamped a hand around something close to the ground and managed to pull up before he caught her, thrusting her fist high to show she'd grabbed the snitch and ended the game.

I couldn't hear them across the field over the roaring of the crowd, but I thought I saw Draco open his mouth, glance at me in the stands, then close his mouth and just nod to Ginny before flying back to his team.

The party in Gryffindor went late, and McGonagall actually came by to join once it started to wind down. "Let them get their celebrating out without an adult and then make sure they actually go to bed?" I asked her. Mathilda and I had only been one of the couples that had needed to hastily disentangle as soon as the assistant headmistress entered the common room.

"Something like that, Mr. Dresden," she gave a slight smile. "By the way, Ms. Grimblehawk, I like the new shade of lipstick, though I'm not sure it suits Mr. Dresden's skin tone as well."

"You got me," I said, then winked, "I'm really having a hard time picking a color, and 'Thilda warned me that hers wouldn't work, but I just had to be sure."

That actually got a short snort of laughter from McGonagall, and titters of amusement from those nearby (while the guys hurriedly swiped at their own faces to remove any telltale marks).

As everyone started to go to bed, Percy, Mathilda, and I had settled into having a nice conversation with McGonagall about growing up in England, Wales, Scotland, and America. Our head of house's experience was, of course, nearly 50 years earlier than ours. She was a child in World War II, but that had some interesting overlaps with Percy and Mathilda being old enough to remember a little of the war with the Death Eaters.

It had gotten quite late and it was just the four of us when Dumbledore's silver phoenix patronus flew into the room and said in the headmaster's voice, "Minerva. You're needed in the infirmary. The Chamber of Secrets has, indeed, been opened again."

"We're coming, too," I told her.

"I certainly can't–" she began.

"You _just_ finished telling us that you are a half-blood," Percy surprised me by interrupting a moment before I could. "And you would certainly be a much more important target than any student." He thought and added, "At least take Mathilda, whose family is pureblood and not known as blood traitors. An attack on her would give lie to the whole situation."

"And she's not going without me to escort her back. Plus Percy, because he's actually allowed to be out after curfew so we don't get stopped," I explained. "Besides, we have mirrors." I reached into a pocket of my utility belt and withdrew four of the mirror-polished bronze disks I'd laboriously transfigured that week.

"...fine," McGonagall eventually allowed. "But be careful."

We'd only been walking for about a minute, carefully using the mirrors to check around corners, before Mathilda asked, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened before? It's supposed to be a myth!"

"It _is_ , dear," McGonagall answered, absently. "It's so unlikely to happen, that it's the professors' code for dark magic being used on a student. It's supposed to be _less_ scary than saying a dark wizard may be at large in the castle. I guess we'll have to change it, going forward."

"Last year, when Meakin was cursed, you just said that he had been imperiused," Percy pointed out.

"Well… I've always thought it was a stupid code," she admitted. "You know how Albus likes his secrets, though."

"So, there couldn't be a chamber?" Mathilda asked.

"When I first started here as a student, they were in the process of installing plumbing throughout the entire castle," McGonagall countered. "Even if the similar projects that have been undertaken throughout the centuries found nothing, _that_ would have made it almost impossible to hide such a chamber."

Given Bob's lecture about magical development over the past millennium, neither Mathilda nor I was willing to argue that surely the ancient wizards could have used magics so subtle as to confound centuries of treasure hunters and castle renovators. We made the rest of the trek in silence, which suited me because I would hopefully hear a threat even before we could see it.

Finally, we reached the infirmary and entered the room to see Pomfrey looking flummoxed next to a bed containing a student, Dumbledore and Sprout looking on. Because Sprout was present, I made the connection that the girl frozen on the bed was one of the Hufflepuff prefects. I'd find out later that her name was Haywood, a half-blood. She was clutching a silver hand mirror in her hand, as if she'd been using it to look around corners on her patrol.

"Ah, Mr. Dresden, it seems your advice may have saved a life," Dumbledore nodded, after clearly considering whether to send us away immediately. "Pomona tells me the consensus among the prefects was, 'better safe than sorry,' so they took to using mirrors to turn corners."

"Should have been bronze," I showed mine. "I take it she's too frozen for the countercurse you used last time?"

"Indeed, though we have hopes that mandrakes can be used to create a restorative draught. A pity that ours will not be mature for a few months yet."

"Could we order mature ones?" McGonagall asked.

Sprout shook her head, "Mandrakes only mature at the height of spring, and need to be used for the draught immediately. If this had happened a few weeks earlier, we might have been able to get some from the southern hemisphere, but they'll have gotten too dried out already to be good for that particular potion."

I moved up next to Dumbledore while Sprout and McGonagall started talking about herbology logistics, and asked quietly, "It's Voldemort again, isn't it? Have you checked Lockhart?"

"I do not believe it is the spirit again, no," he answered. "With a sample of his resonance to work with after last year, I've added a detection spell to the school wards that should alert me if he re-enters the castle, possessing someone or not. And, yes, I have checked Gilderoy thoroughly, and found him to be untainted by dark magic." He removed his spectacles, cleaning them as a nervous habit on one of his paisley handkerchiefs. "But, especially given the attack on you at Hogsmeade, I agree that this must be a ploy of his somehow. Let me know if you discover anything else."

I nodded, and handed him one of my mirrors. "Bronze. May not reflect the gaze of whatever yellow-eyed creature is being used for this."

"Astute," he nodded. "I'll see that they're put into use. Thank you, Mr. Dresden."


	22. Dark Room 8: December Violence

## When the Violence Causes Silence

The rest of November passed without any further attacks. This may or may not have had anything to do with the large curved bronze mirrors that the staff had placed at every intersection in the castle, with official encouragement to look into them before turning corners. Additionally, Beatrice Haywood was well-liked, and the students were finally taking the danger seriously. Most of the houses had started to ensure that well-connected purebloods were always grouped with muggleborn and half-bloods, especially after dark.

"Basilisk, Harry!" Mathilda insisted one Saturday morning at breakfast, the first weekend of December. "They actually exist for sure!"

"How would it be sneaking around the school?" I asked, rehashing the argument we'd been having all month. "A gorgon could just pull up a hood and you'd think she was a witch at a distance. Several people say they've seen a witch's reflection in the mirrors and ran away when she didn't answer them calling."

"Something killed Hagrid's roosters!" she fired back.

"Could be the wargs," I shrugged, "or something else in the forest. And you know roosters aren't actually a danger to a basilisk." We'd had several more sessions with Bob about the various possible attackers, and he'd said a line in one of the bestiaries about basilisks fearing roosters was just poetry. Basilisks were constructs of dark magic that were harmed by sunlight, so roosters crowing meant that it was almost sunrise, and a basilisk would flee to escape the dawn.

"But… what if the dark wizard doesn't know that?" she asked, reaching pretty much the same stalemate we always reached.

We were fortunately interrupted by the mail arriving. As usual, I didn't get anything, but I noticed whatever letter Penny got at the Ravenclaw table had her going pale and jumping up. She ran up to the head table and showed the short note she'd received to Flitwick, her head of house, and he quickly got up and escorted her out of the hall. Percy wasn't far behind, clearly worried for his girlfriend.

"I hope Penny is okay," Mathilda said, watching the three leave.

"Looked like the note was on paper, not parchment," I said. "Maybe something bad happened at home."

We got an answer not long after, when Percy headed back into the room and went to talk to McGonagall. They kept the conversation whispered, so it was hard for me to listen, but I made out words like "accompany," "of age," and "Molly," as Percy got increasingly frustrated. Finally, he looked at me and asked her, "Dresden?"

McGonagall thought for a moment and nodded, getting up from her place and beckoning me to follow her and Percy out of the room. Mathilda tagged along, and the rest of Gryffindor was about to follow as well before our head of house insisted, "Please remain seated. This is a private matter." She didn't seem thrilled that Mathilda was coming along, but shrugged as if knowing my not-girlfriend would find out pretty quickly anyway.

As soon as we were clear of the room and out of earshot of the other students, Percy explained, "Penny's father was injured and is in hospital. She needs someone to accompany her, and since I am not yet of age…"

"You would have to explain the whole thing to your mom to get permission, and we want to move quickly," I finished for him, and he nodded. "But why not a professor?"

McGonagall explained, "I believe you already know your way around Manchester. None of the staff do, and few of us would likely blend into a muggle hospital anyway." I nodded, and she said, "Please go change quickly into muggle attire and meet at the headmaster's office."

I rushed up to the dorms, while Percy and Mathilda went to console Penny. A few minutes later, I was dressed for a Manchester December in the warmest muggle clothing I could get secondhand. A thigh-length military surplus coat concealed my utility belt, but wasn't long enough to carry my blasting rod, much less my staff. I really needed a deeper wizard space pocket, or a bigger jacket.

Approaching the headmaster's office, the gargoyle moved aside as I approached, and I took the magical spiral escalator up. It was the first time I'd been here since Dumbledore had brought me through from Azkaban the previous year, and in the middle of the night I hadn't had time to take a good look. The entire place was stuffed with portraits, books, and magical trinkets, as well as witches, wizards, and one weary-looking phoenix. "Close to a burning day, huh, buddy?" I asked Fawkes. The poor guy just nodded at me, miserable, his plumage much less vibrant than usual. I wondered how long he had to be "old" before his life cycle would reset, born again in flame.

"Any day now, I'm hoping. Well spotted, Mr. Dresden," Dumbledore answered. "Now I understand you know how to use the rail system to get around? I, unfortunately, am too unfamiliar with the city to safely take you directly to the hospital."

"Yeah, we can figure it out. I even have some money for fares," I answered. "You ready, Penny?" I asked her, where she had hastily donned her own muggle clothes and was talking quietly to Percy and Mathilda. Her outfit was considerably more modern and color-coordinated than mine, not salvaged from thrift stores, but, as I'd noticed previously over the summer, was probably not that much more expensive. She nodded at me, hugging Percy and giving Mathilda's hand a grateful squeeze before getting up.

"Remember, Mr. Dresden, to be on your best behavior," McGonagall insisted. "While you're an adult, now, you still need to be more careful than others in muggle areas. If you get in trouble, and it won't break the Statute, send a patronus."

"Got it," I told her, then gestured to the fireplace, looking at Penny. "Shall we?"

Before I stepped through, I gave Percy a nod that I'd take care of his girlfriend. A few moments of twisting through an inferno later, and I was stepping out behind Penny into the coat store that was the only public floo we knew about in Manchester.

She'd already asked the shopkeep for information, and he was explaining, "Oh, aye. There were a pair of bombings on Thursday morning. IRA took credit. They were prob'ly tryin' to blow up the cathedral, mostly, but hurt a lot of people in the area. I hear the hospital's full up with the injured. Thank Merlin nobody died!"

Penny was quiet as we took the bus into the tram station, and let me talk to the attendant to figure out what we needed to do to get to the Royal Infirmary. They were likely more willing to explain to a confused American than to a local girl, anyway. We were looking at riding the tram all the way into town, which was further than Percy and I usually rode in to get to her neighborhood, then switching to a bus. "We're on here a while. Want to talk about it?" I asked my friend, when we'd both settled into seats and started watching the city go by.

She nodded, and started to explain, "The Clearwaters moved to Manchester as soon as the canal opened. It'll be a century in a couple of years. According to my dad, we've been dockworkers as far back as the records _go_. Big, manly men putting things on and off ships and barges.

"I don't know if he would have been as bad if the port hadn't closed when I was seven. I remember him being _happier_ before then. He'd go off for a hard day's work to provide for his girls back home. He _hates_ it that mum had to start working when he got laid off.

"You know what he hated the most, when my Hogwarts letter showed up? It didn't bother him at all that magic was real. I think both my parents had figured that out, because of the accidental magic. He hated that I was going to go to boarding school and get a fancy education." She trailed off, having a hard time finding more words.

"That's why he doesn't like you going anywhere on your own?" I asked, prompting her.

"'It's a dangerous world out there, Penelope,'" she deepened her voice, doing an impression of her father. "'Now if you were a boy, it would be different, but a lady needs to be _protected_.'" She threw up her hands, "What about _him_? He's in town every day when he's between temp jobs, sometimes the bad parts of town, looking for work. Did all his big manly muscles protect him from a _bomb_?" she scoffed.

"Guess the wizarding world wasn't that big of a change for you, after all?" I guessed.

"Hah! You're exactly right. You know I let slip a little bit about Percy's family and dad was _thrilled_. He finally decided school was good for me, since it let me meet a smart boy with a bright future who's used to having a big family. He's got it all figured out where I'm just going to be another Molly Weasley, popping out kids at home while Percy works in the Ministry!"

Putting the brakes on the contempt for her potential mother-in-law, I mentioned, "You know Mrs. Weasley _wanted_ to be a homemaker, right? She's apparently an absolutely brilliant duelist, but kids were important to her. I don't think that means she'd expect you to follow her path."

She nodded, a little contrite, and said, "My dad wanted kids so badly, too. It broke his heart when the work started to dry up, and they realized they'd never be able to afford any more kids but me. They could barely afford to keep the roof over my head and clothes on my back as it is. And they work _so hard_! And neither of them really understand why I want to get an education, and do _better_ than they could...

"But they love me anyway. And support me anyway. And even when my dad's being the most controlling chauvinist in the universe, I still know he'd step in front of a bullet for me without thinking about it. Or a bomb." She quietly started sobbing, and, feeling helpless, I did the only thing I could and just wrapped an arm around her while she cried. Through the tears, she whispered, "I just hope he's okay."

We made it into the hospital, just two in the crowd of people in the waiting room trying to get news. Penny, as a relative, was able to get in to see her dad. Despite being only there as a friend who "gave her a ride," they let me accompany her to the triage area, because things were just that hectic. Dozens of beds had been set up, and several were still filled. Her father was sleeping, and despite obviously being a big man as she'd described, being wounded and unconscious made him look so small. We'd apparently just missed her mother, who wanted to stay but had to go back to work. I got a bit agitated and lights near me began to flicker, so I excused myself and waited back in the main room, concentrating to keep a lid on my magic lest I wipe out a bunch of life support equipment.

Apparently I still had my own issues to work out. My father had died from an aneurysm and I found his body in bed the next morning. Seeing Penny with her unconscious dad brought a lot of it back.

Eventually, Penny came back up, and she'd clearly been crying. "Can we get lunch?" she asked. I nodded and as we walked out of the hospital, she started to explain. "I finally talked to the doctor. He got hit in the back. He was _in_ the church. Three big pieces of glass. It got his thigh, his shoulder blade, and his upper arm. Fortunately, it didn't hit an artery…" she sniffled.

"But?" I asked.

"But it was _deep_ , and they say he might have trouble lifting anything and walking. And there are people in there who have it _worse_. And it's the kind of thing that Madam Pomfrey heals with a pat on the head and right back to classes." She got the last out in a frustrated huff.

We stopped by a payphone so she could have a tear-filled conversation with her mother. Then she was mostly quiet as we found a cheap deli after walking around the hospital for a while, and I tried to enjoy just the simple pleasure of a cold Coke and non-wizarding food, even though my friend was hurting.

Finally, after we finished, and it looked like she'd been thinking hard, we started to head back. She mentioned, "If I hadn't sent my weekly letter to mum, she couldn't have used the owl to let me know what happened immediately. If he'd just started healing for a couple more days, it might be _too late_."

"What do you mean, too late?" I asked, suddenly realizing our walk to lunch had given her time to case the area. Instead of going straight back, we were heading into a parking deck.

She pointed out a locked maintenance closet, "Can you open that?" Trusting I was going to, she started fishing out a very familiar tool from her purse: one of the poppets I'd given her and Hermione to avoid the Trace over the summer.

"You can't–" I started.

"Did you suddenly get good at doing healing spells?" she asked me, pointedly. "Then I _have to_."

"If the Ministry finds out…" I started.

She nodded, accepting the weight of it. "Then I'll most likely get a fine. Maybe something a little worse. And my dad will be able to walk without a limp, and lift his arms over his head."

I thought about talking her out of it, about really making her understand how bad it could get for a muggleborn breaking the rules. But she wasn't wrong to want to help. I fished out the oversized skeleton key that was my unlocking focus and tapped the door with a quiet, " _Alohomora_ ," to let us in. The room was tiny, but we were able to clear enough floor space to do the ritual.

We walked back into the ward while most of the staff was out at lunch, Penny's Trace signature hanging with the poppet—a heavy weight around my neck. I tried to keep my magic completely contained, not wanting to risk giving the Ministry even a hint that something was happening here, much less destroying the equipment.

"I don't know if an Episkey is going to cut it," I mentioned as we entered.

"Fortunately, we have a friend in the Half-Blood Prince," she smiled wanly. Checking to make sure there were no nurses watching, she slipped her wand out and began to sing the incantation, almost like a lullabye, " _Vulnera Sanentur_." One by one, she sang her father's wounds closed beneath the stitches and bandages. And then, hiding an ecstatic grin that it seemed to have worked, she moved around the ward, singing the spell for everyone she could get to without being noticed, putting a mild sleeping charm on those that were awake so she could work, again and again, until she used up the ritual and the poppet fell from my neck.

I just hoped it wouldn't be hailed as a miracle and, if it was, that word wouldn't make it back to the Ministry. This almost _certainly_ violated my Doom of Damocles.

But for the look on Penny's face as she talked quietly with her father and told him he'd be okay, and for the proud look on his when he realized that her magical education had healed him, I'd own the blame if the aurors ever came to ask.

## Fortune Favors the Bold

"I _has_ to be Malfoy," Ron insisted to the other second-years who'd clustered near the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room to try to work out who the Heir of Slytherin could be before everyone left for winter break. Seamus nodded along with the redhead.

"It can't be," Neville explained, patiently, for the umpteenth time. "His family history is fully documented. The Blacks would _definitely_ have mentioned it if they could trace back to Slytherin, and the Malfoys are from _France_."

"What if Slytherin went to France and had children after he left Hogwarts?" Hermione mused.

Four sets of eyes turned in appeal to me, where I was sitting a little ways away reading a book, Mathilda's legs draped over mine as she dozed on the couch we were sharing. "It's _possible_ ," I admitted. The creator of Bob's skull, Etienne the Enchanter, had been French, so if he knew Slytherin, it could have meant they met in France. "But it's not Draco. He's just the only Slytherin the four of you know."

"He's not the _only_ one, but he's the _worst_ one," Ron insisted. "And he was _awful_ to Dean and me at the dueling club."

"You were both antagonizing him about your father's raid on his house," Hermione chided.

Lockhart's dueling club the night before had actually been a pretty decent showing, largely due to the tutoring so many of the kids were getting from Dumbledore's friends on the weekends. Draco had wound up matched with Dean Thomas, the muggleborn boy in Ron, Seamus, and Neville's dorm that the three didn't hang out with much. Draco had pulled out some pretty obscure hexes, and in response Dean had wound up showing Draco his karate. Both of them left the club angry and embarrassed.

"Draco _has_ been a lot better in enchanting club lately," Neville allowed. "Has he given you any grief about being muggleborn, Hermione?"

"Not really," she allowed. "He pretty clearly _thinks_ he's better than me, but he wants to _prove_ it." She thought about it for a second. "But he's said some things that make me think he knows who it is."

"That's not actually impossible," I admitted. "One of the Death Eaters who attacked me may have family in Slytherin who put Flint in contact with him. Any of the Slytherins could know who that was."

"You think the Heir of Slytherin is whoever ordered them to…" Hermione trailed off, then put it together. "It's Voldemort."

I nodded as the boys gasped at the name. "Dumbledore seems pretty sure the wards would alert him if Voldemort got inside the school, but we have no idea how many of his people he's got working for him again or what they're up to, other than trying to steal my blood."

Was it irresponsible for me to include a bunch of 12-year-olds in the secrets I knew about a magical terrorist organization? Maybe. But they were determined to get involved anyway. And Hermione was actually 13 already.

"It probably _is_ Malfoy's father, then," Ron nodded. "He was a Death Eater. Maybe the reason dad didn't find any dark artifacts at Malfoy Manor is because he already gave them to Draco to use at school!"

Personally, I rather thought that they didn't find anything because Lucius Malfoy had been warned months earlier, hence his Spring cleaning that resulted in a bunch of broken enchantments for me to fix over the summer. It probably also explained why we'd seen him and Draco in the seedy part of the alley.

"Maybe Dean and Cormac'll find somethin'," Seamus suggested.

"What do you–" I started to ask, just as the front door to the common room burst open and a boy stumbled in, winded. He was tall with short curly hair, and I vaguely remembered that _he_ was the aforementioned Cormac. I only recognized him because he was in Katie Bell's year and she'd put her foot down about inviting him to the study groups we'd had with the lower-years before our OWLs. He was apparently kind of a jerk.

"Gorgon!" he tried to yell, but mostly wheezed because he was so out of breath. Mathilda started awake at the yell, sliding her legs off of my lap and sitting up on the couch. Cormac took a moment, a hand on the back of a chair to catch his breath, then explained in slightly less halting breaths, "It's a gorgon! We saw the hooded lady!"

"Where's Dean?" Neville asked, looking at the door to the room, waiting for his year-mate.

"He was right behind me!" Cormac turned around. "Him and Nearly-Headless Nick!"

"You ran and left Dean!" Seamus yelled. "You wanker!"

I glanced at the clock above the fireplace, and saw we still had a fair amount of time to curfew. I knew Percy was planning to spend some quality time with Penny before they had to be apart for two weeks, so was probably holed up in an empty classroom somewhere. Oliver and Alexis were similarly missing. In fact, _most_ of the paired-off upper years were missing from the common room. "Guess it's us," I told Mathilda. She nodded, rubbing her eyes to wake up fully. "Take us to where you lost them, Cormac," I told him. Seeing the kids brighten up I said, "No! If we see it, we're going to run, too. You stay here."

The inquisitive foursome grumbled about getting left behind, and Cormac grumbled about getting forced to go back out. He explained, grudgingly, as we set out into the dim hallways, bronze mirrors clutched in our hands. "We were waiting in the library, keeping an eye on Malfoy. When he left, we followed him out. We figured if he was the heir, he couldn't do anything because I'm a pureblood. But we ran into Nick, and he was feeling chatty, so we lost sight of the Slytherins. We were heading back this way when we saw her around the corner. I really thought he was right behind me!"

"Did you get a good look?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Those mirrors aren't very clear, especially at night. Definitely shaped like a witch in a hood or a hat. And I thought I saw the shadows moving around her." We walked for a few more minutes and he said, "Around here."

We were on the fourth floor, near the library, on basically the path that would make sense if they'd followed Draco down a couple of floors toward the dungeons and then turned around and headed back toward Gryffindor tower. The area was, indeed, spooky in the dim torchlight.

And it was spookier still because of the frozen form of Dean Thomas, locked as if racing toward us, glancing back over his shoulder in the direction he was running from. The translucent form of Sir Nicholas, the Gryffindor ghost, hung behind him, in line with where he was looking. The ghost's body was filled with a black smoke, and he looked as surprised as anyone that he'd been vulnerable.

"Oh, no!" Cormac seemed genuinely upset that his friend had gotten petrified. "Why'd you look back?"

"Nick said something," Mathilda suggested, peering up at the ghost's face. "Got Dean's attention."

"Makes sense to me," I said. "Looks like he took the attack, at least, so Dean got a reduced effect." The kid was clearly just paralyzed, rather than fully turned to stone. "I wonder why she keeps leaving them without finishing the job. It's almost like she wants them to be found like this." I sent off a messenger patronus to Dumbledore, though it took me a moment to marshal my happy thoughts while looking at two petrified housemates, even if one was a ghost.

The headmaster arrived a few minutes later, with several of the other staff, and began examining the pair, trying to figure out how a ghost could be partially petrified and how to move Nick out of the corridor. Flitwick eventually just muttered, " _Ventus_ ," and we were all surprised that the stream of wind was enough to waft the ghost down the corridor.

I took the opportunity to corner Dumbledore while everyone was distracted, and asked quietly, "We're getting really lucky here. We need to find out what's going on before someone gets killed."

"Fortunately, no one has died in the castle for 50 years," he deflected. "When poor Ms. Warren died during similar circumstances, I was able to convince the previous headmaster to adjust the wards. A potent bit of fortunamancy guards all students and staff within these walls: circumstances will conspire to turn any deadly attack into a near miss, if at all possible."

That actually explained a lot about why the staff was so lax about safety. "Wait. Similar circumstances?" I asked.

"At that time, it was generally believed that the paralyzations were due to bites from an immature acromantula," he explained. "Though I, myself, believed that they were due to a modification of the full body-bind curse to behave more like the hardening charm. Either way, they were much less resistant to healing than the current attacks. This may simply be because the attacker has grown _more powerful_ in the intervening half-century."

"Was Voldemort a student here the last time this happened?"

He took the momentary pause that I'd started to realize meant he was thinking about evading the question, then explained, "You might check the trophy room for an award presented to Tom Riddle in that period. If you knew his middle name was Marvolo, you could perhaps consider what that full name is an anagram of."

I wasn't exactly able to perfectly visualize letters in my head and rearrange them, but I thought I got where he was going. "The name so feared that wizards won't speak it is just someone playing word jumble with his real name? And you think this is just someone using a curse that he invented as a kid," I said and he didn't contradict me. "Still," I argued, "if it _is_ a creature with a gaze that turns people to stone, it only needs to wander into the great hall at dinner and there will only be so much the fortune wards can do to keep everyone from looking directly at it."

He nodded, "I planned to have the staff do a thorough inspection of the castle during the break. Hopefully there will at least be traces of whatever curse, artifact, or creature is being used. I had hoped that there would be no further incidents until we could make the inspection, but alas."

"Thanks, Professor," I told him, slightly mollified. "I'll pick Remus' brain about it over the break, and see if I can figure out anything else."

"I _am_ glad you and Remus are getting on," Dumbledore smiled. "I worried that he's been rather lonely these past few years. Having a housemate has been good for him." He began to wander off, and added, "But I _do_ hope that you're able to save some time to have a happy, and safe, holidays, Mr. Dresden."

I hoped so too, though suddenly I was wondering if, given my recent history, the headmaster's fortune-bending ward wasn't all that was keeping _me_ alive some days.

## Viewing Party

What felt like half of Gryffindor had come over to Remus' house for the pre-Christmas movie-watching experience on Monday evening. Somehow a party that had started with just Mathilda and Ron had expanded to include basically every one of their friends and family that could floo or drive. Remus, me, Mathilda, five Weasleys, Oliver, Alexis, Luna, Neville, Seamus, and three Grangers made an incredibly packed viewing. If Colin's dad hadn't had to work, we'd probably have had three Creeveys as well, and Percy was just counting the days until Penny could get her apparition license.

In addition to _Cannonball Run_ , Mathilda had insisted on exposing everyone to _Legend_ , so we set up for a double feature in a bachelor's living room. His large but not truly excessive television was not the most ideal option for 16 people crammed into a mid-sized room, but we made it work. Remus had tutored almost everyone in defense over the semester, so wasn't too anxious about all the kids in his house. Jean and Helen Granger were keeping him company in chairs they'd dragged to the back of the room, and their primary entertainment seemed to be watching their formerly-friendless daughter crammed into a pile of adolescents where she was happily eating popcorn and explaining how automobiles worked.

When the movies finished, pushing toward midnight on the longest night of the year, Percy immediately asked Mathilda, " _How_ did that not get flagged as a violation of the Statute of Secrecy? While Dobalar the Dark was not a demonic being, he _did_ wear a similar horned helmet, and the events are basically identical to the Dark Winter incident of 1258. Meg Mucklebones is legitimately one of the most famous hags in history, and Blindaxe 'Blix' the Butcher went on to lead the Goblin Insurrection of 1287."

She grinned, "My uncle asked the same thing when it came out. Turned out the Malfoys are major investors in the production company, and got a 'special dispensation' to get the film made."

"I suppose they _did_ avoid revealing that Jack and Lillian Wenlock were wizards," Percy allowed, clearly uncomfortable about the implication of a bribe allowing the film to get made. "If it got approval, I wonder if I could convince Professor Binns to show it in class…"

"Why _don't_ we have more audio-visual examples in classes at school?" Hermione asked. "In my primary school, we would watch educational videos fairly often. While I felt they were usually too high-level, they seemed to be a valuable way to keep student attention and demonstrate things that were hard to see in the classroom."

"Or at least field trips," I suggested. "It would be pretty hard to get a video player working at Hogwarts, but it's so weird that we have the ability to _teleport_ anywhere in Britain in moments, and we only leave the school three times a year to go shopping in the town next door."

"It's traditionally been too dangerous," Remus explained. "It's dangerous enough _within_ the Hogwarts wards. Even if you took field trips to areas where there's little risk of violating the Statute, it would be very easy for dark wizards or creatures to attack and pick off a student or two. Even in times of peace, family rivalries make it almost a certainty someone would ruin it for everyone."

"Speaking of traveling," Jean Granger interjected, probably not liking to think about dark wizards murdering his daughter on a field trip. He looked at his watch and continued, "we've got a bit of a drive back to the house."

Everyone else realized that they ought to be leaving as well. There was a whole series of wrapped present exchanges, thanks, and goodbyes. The Grangers went out to their car, while the rest of the party began to floo out one at a time from Remus' den.

By midnight, everyone had gone who didn't live there except Oliver and Alexis (who were taking advantage of a last, parent-free chance to make out) and Mathilda (same). Remus had given us a minute, but finally cleared his throat and explained, "As much as I want to be the cool adult, it really is getting–"

He was interrupted by the fireplace suddenly flaring green and high enough to endanger the mantle before abruptly going out, the logs quenched to smoking coals. "Someone try to attack through the floo?" Oliver asked, having had the reflexes to move so he was in between Alexis and the fireplace. I hadn't quite had the same reaction time, but my left hand was raised, ready to shield me and Mathilda.

Remus shook his head, "No. I've seen that kind of attack before. This, I've never seen." He began waving his wand to cast detection charms on the fireplace. After a few seconds he grumbled, running a hand in agitation through his graying brown hair, "The floo connection seems damaged. I don't know if it will be safe to use." He thought for another few seconds and asked, "Are your parents going to worry if you aren't back?"

Alexis bit her lip in apparent concern, but Oliver said, "Lexi, you can do a patronus now, yeah? Harry, can you show us how t'do the messenger patronus?"

"You'll have to contact my uncle for me," Mathilda told me. "I haven't quite gotten a corporeal patronus yet. Also, the Trace." Oliver and Alexis had also turned 17 in the fall semester, so Mathilda was the only one in the house currently underage.

Remus actually proved to be more of a help, since he could show the proper wand gestures. Soon three silver animals were racing across Britain to tell parental figures that the kids were alright.

"And now to figure out sleeping arrangements," Remus said, then smirked at the light of hope on Oliver's features, "Separate beds, I think."

Through hasty cleaning of our two bachelor rooms and using the couches in the living room and the den, we managed to sleep five people separately, if not completely comfortably. In the den, Oliver and I were woken to the morning post owl, carrying a Daily Prophet with a red notice sticking out from the rolled up newspaper.

The hastily-typeset missive, which felt like it had been mass-duplicated and wouldn't last long before the conjuration evaporated, explained:

_At approximately 12 AM on the morning of December 22, 1992, a currently-unknown problem occurred with the floo network. This also seems to have made apparition unreliable, especially over long distances._

_The Ministry is working around the clock to solve these problems. Tune into the Wizarding Wireless for more updates. Please use brooms or the Knight Bus to travel in the meantime. Remember to disillusion if using magical transport through muggle areas._

"Well, that's a bother," Oliver sighed, absently running a hand over his crew-cut hair. "Wonder what coulda happened t'cause that?"

I started to shrug, then absent worries I'd had overnight caused me to squint and explain, "Midnight on the solstice can't be a coincidence. Give me a minute. I need to go look something up in my room."

It was weird knocking at my own door, and Mathilda called out, "I'm up." After confirming through the door that she was decent, I entered. She was extremely tousled, wearing one of my t-shirts to sleep in. Nobody that wandered in off the street would believe I'd spent the night on the couch. "This is a good bed," she smiled.

I smiled back, but it was forced. "Can you put up the silencing charms and lock the door?" I asked, quietly, already opening my trunk to retrieve Bob. She just gave me a raised eyebrow and I said, "Or at least lock the door? Stupid Trace." Once the door was locked, and having to keep my voice down, I asked. "Hey, Bob?" The skull's eye flames flickered on, still relatively bright in the early morning. "The floo went out everywhere at midnight on the solstice, and apparition is apparently messed up too…" I explained to Mathilda as much as the skull.

Mathilda's face was slightly shocked, and Bob made a whistling noise, his flames shading blue as he extended his senses. "You _used_ to have a nice Veil there." I groaned, my darkest worries confirmed. "Well, it's not _gone_ , exactly. But it got ripped pretty badly. I'd guess something big came through and the damage rippled out."

"Are more creatures going to start pouring out?" Mathilda asked.

"Maybe?" Bob thought, then his flames flared and the light from them panned around the room. " _Probably_ not. It's more like cracks through the structure. They're not wide enough that anything can just come through, but they're interrupting magical translocation paths."

"Can it be fixed?" I asked.

"With enough wizards and enough magic, probably," Bob said, in the tone of voice that sounded like he wasn't very sure. "Though _I'm_ not even totally sure how you'd go about it."

Rapidly waking up and thinking, Mathilda said, "They'll have the Department of Mysteries on it. When it was just magical beasts getting through, nobody really cared. Now that _everyone_ will be inconvenienced, they'll actually get the funding." She grinned, "I guess people are done doubting you about where the beasts were coming from, Harry."

"Great. Vindication," I deadpanned. "I'm worried about what big thing got through that they were working up to releasing at such a ritually significant time."

It would turn out that I'd find out soon, and all my guesses were wrong.

## I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff

The problem hadn't been solved by that evening. Mathilda and Alexis had eventually decided to take the Knight Bus home, since they didn't live that far away from Remus' house. Oliver opined that he would really not like to take the beating from several hours on the unsafe magical transport all the way back to Scotland, so was sticking around at least another day hoping the floos would be fixed.

We were just getting around to figuring out dinner as the sun began to set when I heard the sound of crashing from the back yard. Remus stopped mid-sentence, having heard it too, and also noted, "Something's crossed the wards." We moved to the back window in the den, peeking through the curtains to see Fenrir Greyback striding through the hole he'd kicked in the middle of the rear fence, the gate and several high wooden slats knocked onto Remus' rear lawn. The rolling green of the nature preserve was visible through the gap, and I thought I glimpsed at least one other person moving, still outside the fence. Fortunately, the fence was high enough that the neighbors likely weren't aware _yet_.

"It's the werewolf that attacked me in Hogsmeade," I explained to Oliver, who was looking confused. "He has a beef with Remus. How are your wards?" I asked.

"I'm a bachelor, in a muggle area, who bought a house in the last few years with no familial connection," Remus frowned. "I was hoping he'd never _find_ me."

"What did Penny say last year?" Oliver asked, equally dead serious. "Security through obscurity ne'er works?"

"Remus!" Greyback shouted, looking at the window as if he'd seen the curtains move. He stepped forward onto the lawn, the young willow and koi pond in the corner to his left, our right. "There's an old muggle story I like. I think it starts, 'Little pig, little pig, let me in…'"

"He's gonna keep talkin'?" Oliver asked.

"Wants me submissive," Remus groaned. "And loves the sound of his own voice."

"Took me a while to find you," Greyback was continuing as he amusedly took in the backyard. Since I'd worked out his secret, Remus had restored the other main yard decoration: various antique wolf statues in granite or bronze. He figured if a neighbor glimpsed him back there as a wolf one night, the statues would provide a ready explanation. "And then I wasn't sure how to get you to come out and take your beating, without you just calling the aurors or running away. Then _today_ fell into my lap. It's the wrong time of the month, but I'll take it."

"We could still apparate far enough to be a problem catching us," Remus said quietly, then looked like he was extending his senses. "No. Someone's put up an anti-apparition jinx."

"He's got friends," I said, just as a familiar pair of silhouettes in Death Eater masks moved into the yard. "Macnair and his buddy."

"Dresden? You in there? Hope so," Greyback continued to monologue, having moved far enough across the yard to prop a foot up on one of the comfortable oak benches that served as Remus' patio furniture. "Turns out some of my old friends were upset with me that I almost did for you, seeing as they have their own plans. So I figured we could come collect you _both_."

"They want both of us alive, but injured," I thought out loud. "But they don't know you're here and won't care if they kill you," I told Oliver. I wasn't totally sure about his family, but I doubted he'd get the same pureblood politeness that Mathilda got the last time they attacked me. "Stay out of sight, look for an opportunity to hit from cover?"

"Makes sense," my roommate nodded.

"Are we really doing this?" Remus sighed. "Dumbledore is going to be very _obviously_ disappointed in me if I let you fight instead of just trying for safety."

"Think they'll burn down your house and kill your neighbors even if we do get away?" I asked.

"Fair point."

"And, hey, way better odds than the last time they attacked me," I grinned. While Mathilda was probably the fifth-year I'd _most_ want to have my back, Oliver was a year more trained. Greyback was a lot bigger help to the Death Eaters than Flint, but hopefully Remus more than evened out the difference. Plus, we had the home field advantage.

"So Dumbledore's just a patronus away this time as well?" Remus snarked as the two of us got our gear together. I whispered a theory to Oliver, and he stopped by the kitchen before moving upstairs to snipe from an upper window. Before my roommate left, Remus whispered, " _Deus illusio_ ," and tapped him on the head, the disillusionment veil cloaking him as he left. I wasn't sure I'd ever heard the incantation for that spell, and I smirked that it was probably a reference to Mercury's ability to turn invisible, with the English name coming from misunderstanding the incantation. Foci in hand, we stepped carefully out the back door.

"Aw, you didn't even do the, 'Not by the hairs of my chinny, chin chin,' bit," Greyback sneered, putting his foot back on the ground. "You two ready for your beating?"

"Hey, skinny," I ignored Greyback and spoke across the yard to the thin Death Eater, "do you want to put up some silencing with your anti-apparition jinx? Hate to have the muggle cops show up and distract everyone."

"Or we could take this into the nature preserve," Remus suggested, nodding at the half mile of rolling fields and the forest beyond.

Greyback was annoyed that we were ignoring him and growled, "Like any muggle would even be a distraction." I smirked as the Death Eater clearly made a wand gesture to do as I'd suggested. "And if you _want_ to go into the woods, I think we'll do this right here, where you have to worry about your precious muggles."

"And there's'n a secret passage for ye t'hide in this time, boy," the big guy with the axe, Macnair, said, planting his axe, his back to the koi pond.

"Cool. That makes sense," I nodded gravely, grinning internally at the setup line. It would hopefully be especially ironic in a moment. "So, there's one question I had before we– _Levicorpus! Expelliarmus! Flipendo!_ " While I was casting a different spell at each of the men, I was diving to my left to put one of the wolf figurines in between me and the thin one, whose love of unforgivables was my biggest worry.

While I was firing off my spells, Remus was doing a Captain Kirk-style dive roll to his right, finding cover of his own behind another piece of statuary. His casting was silent, sending fast jinxes mostly at Greyback, and performing some transfiguration to cause several of the flagstones of the patio to grow upwards into columns that would provide us more cover.

Maybe it was whatever Remus sent softening up his spell resistance, but my spell (one of the Half-Blood Prince's inventions) caught on the evil werewolf enough to flip him upside down by an ankle. The thin man negligently shielded against my disarming charm and whatever Remus had tossed his way. But Macnair was too busy forming a shield against Remus (it seemed to come from a large bracer focus on his left arm) to defend against my knockback jinx.

The big man was blown across the koi pond, right into the immature whomping willow. It was annoyed.

" _Liberacorpus!_ " hissed the thin man, dropping Greyback to the ground in time for Remus' follow-up spells to fly overhead. "You like Snape's inventions? _Sectumsempra!_ "

I ducked and let the dark cutting curse splash off the statue I was hiding behind. I guess _that_ answered several questions we'd had about the spell and who the Half-Blood Prince was. "I find they aren't very good against inanimate objects," I deadpanned to the guy in return. Well, as deadpan as you can get when you're yelling across the battlefield covered in spellfire while a willow tree beats the holy hell out of a squealing maniac. I wondered if the immature psychotic tree recognized the guy's axe as a threat and was especially angry about it.

" _Crucio!_ " the thin man barked, trying to catch my leg around my hiding space, but the past year's experiences had made me _very_ motivated to keep track of my gangly extremities when people were throwing unforgivables around. It tore a chunk out of the back wall of Remus' house when it sped past me.

I wasn't sure what kind of effect Remus was having on Greyback, as he seemed to be frantically playing cat and mouse with the bigger werewolf on his side of the yard, his spells seeming to splash off. I wondered if werewolves were especially magic resistant against their own progeny. "Remus! Switch partners!" I suggested, then yelled, " _Alarte ascendare!_ " to try to knock Greyback into the air.

The curse-embraced werewolf was practically crackling with dark energy at this point, and my spell rolled off of him with only a brief lift. It got his attention, though, as Remus shot me a look but began dueling with the Death Eater at the back of the yard. Literally foaming at the mouth, Greyback snarled, "I'll teach you not to get between an alpha and his lessons, unless you want to be _meat_!"

"Careful, Fido," I taunted, moving between obstacles in the back yard to keep Greyback at bay, using my staff to banish myself off of the structures in the yard when he got too close. "Your master will get the newspaper if you chew me up too badly. Bad dog!"

Snarling in utter rage, he picked up one of the benches from the patio and let my attack spells wash over him, planning to throw the piece of furniture at me.

Grinning at the memory of figuring out how to fight a troll, I incanted, " _Wingardium leviosa!_ " and levitated the bench out of his hands on the lift, slamming my staff down overhand to send 75 pounds of hardwood careening into his head. While the hit staggered him, he snarled and stood back up, literally beating at his chest out of some monster-movie machismo. "Oliver!" I yelled, figuring my roommate would never have a better shot.

" _Depulso!_ " the disillusioned form of Oliver Wood yelled from the second floor, looking nearly straight down at the werewolf's back. A shimmering shower of bolts rained from above, most hitting Greyback's neck and shoulders.

The guy that was more beast than man at the moment nonetheless still grinned evilly through his snarl as he noticed the transfigured silver spikes that had missed him and embedded themselves in the yard. "That doesn't work," he chuckled grimly, but the laughter turned into choking from the bolts buried in his throat.

"It's inherited," I shrugged. Remus had, in fact, had a whole box of fine silverware that his parents left him as a final screw-you to the son that had the temerity to suffer for their crusade. In one of our conversations about Bob's theory that inherited silver might hurt werewolves, he'd mentioned he had it and that it _had_ given him an allergic reaction. So he'd just put it into the back of one of his cabinets until Oliver, at my suggestion, grabbed a handful of silver forks to transfigure into spikes.

Growling but barely able to move from the bleeding and damaged organs, Greyback slumped to his knees and stopped fighting, reaching a hand behind to try to pull the spikes out.

I turned to watch the stalemate that was Remus vs. the Death Eater. Macnair seemed to be gradually winning against the tree, but it had smashed his axe to bits so he was trying to use his bulk to overpower the whipping branches and he didn't seem to be able to do much magic without a focus. I pulled out my blasting rod and tossed out a, " _Glacius!_ " at Skinny's flank.

The guy barely shielded in time, the white mask quickly looking around the yard, suddenly realizing he was basically now fighting alone against three wizards. With a hiss he spun into apparition to dodge one of Remus' spells and I felt a pressure lessen from him having dropped his anti-apparition jinx. He appeared next to Macnair, both of them getting furiously whipped by the angry willow tree before he could side-along apparate the bigger Death Eater, each disappearing in a snap of air.

"Cowards," Remus said, clearly very winded from the battle. He ran a hand through his graying hair to push it out of his eyes as he walked over to where his lifelong nemesis was slowly bleeding out on his back patio. "I'm sorry, Fenrir," he said insincerely. "While if you were a normal wizard, I could probably save you, I'm afraid you'd resist healing spells as easily as jinxes and charms."

"This doesn't... count." Greyback choked out. "Didn't... beat me... yourself."

Shaking his head and leaning against one of the transfigured flagstone columns because I'd used his patio seating as an improvised missile, Remus simply explained, "This was never about beating you, Fenrir. _You're_ the one who's obsessed with _me_. I'm a human being, not an animal. I don't have to overpower you to prove anything.

"Besides. Muggle naturalists have proven that the idea of 'alpha' wolves is so much nonsense anyway. You're not an animal, either. You're just a sad, cursed man. And I'm done with you." Remus thought for a moment, summoned his energy, and incanted, " _Stupefy!_ " It was enough to get through the dying werewolf's magic resistance and knock him out. Remus smiled at me wanly and said, "There's no need to let him suffer unduly. I'm not a monster."

I nodded. The only monster here was peacefully bleeding to death. Several ornamental statues of wolves, three wizards, and an extremely displeased tree bore witness to his passing.


	23. Dark Room 9: Xmas Ball

## Destiny and Entropy

The rest of the night was tense, as we weren't sure if the Death Eaters would return and try to attack again once we'd gone to sleep. Remus exchanged messenger patronuses with a few people, and we slept in shifts. Fortunately, they didn't make another attempt, and mid-morning the next day a pair of familiar figures disembarked from the Knight Bus onto Remus' driveway. "Aurors are here," I told Remus and Oliver.

"She's cute," Oliver observed about Auror-Apprentice Don't-Call-Me-Nymphadora Tonks, joining me to watch our visitors through the living room window. Moody couldn't just walk up and ring the bell of course, and was casting a whole series of detection charms while Tonks looked on in amusement, trying to pretend that she was fully committed to watching his back while he worked. "Reminds me of someone," he considered. I didn't help him out; Oliver had met my godmother, and I didn't want anyone else making that connection. "Oh! Right! She was that Hufflepuff girl 't'was friends with Charlie Weasley. I always thought she was fit."

Remus, who'd joined us, nodded absently at Oliver's pronouncement about the pink-haired auror. Then he did a double-take and asked, "Is that Andromeda Tonks' daughter?"

"Probably," I told him, recognizing the astronomical Black naming scheme. "Said her mother was a Black who was disowned for marrying a muggleborn."

"That's her," he nodded. "Andromeda was the only other Black that Sirius would talk to. Nymphadora was maybe five the last time I saw her?" A whole cloud of emotions rolled across Remus' face. I figured it was some combination of thinking about one of the friends he lost in the war, and realizing he was ogling a girl who he remembered as a five-year-old.

"They grow up so fast," I grinned. "Don't call her by her first name, by the way," I warned him. "She seems to hate it."

The pair of aurors finally came up and rang the bell, and Remus let them in after some quiet question-and-answer verification between the two men to establish identities. I kept a wary eye on Moody as he entered, ready to shield or dodge. "We'll have you prepared for the field in no time, Dresden," he observed, grinning at my obvious belief that he was going to try to hex me. "Wood," he nodded at my roommate, who he'd met one of the few times he'd run a Saturday defense tutoring session. "I hear you killed a werewolf?"

"T'was a team effort," Oliver demurred, but stood up a bit straighter and made eyes at Tonks. I chuckled quietly. I'd been worried that he would be having some issues after having killed a guy, even if it was a bad guy, but if he could use the experience to flirt with cute girls, he was probably going to be okay.

After finding out about how using magic to kill tore your soul, I'd done a lot of research. It turned out banishing physical objects was a bit of a loophole, or at least a gray area, because your magic wasn't directly connecting you to the death, just propelling a dangerous object. For similar reasons, back before Britain had removed the death penalty, aurors would carry enchanted swords for when they had to perform a field execution. You might have to deal with the psychological trauma of killing someone, but at least your soul would be intact. Not like using a deadly curse directly on a target… or even accidentally burning your mentor to death with fiendfyre.

I'd probably still be upset about the whole thing, except Bob's descriptions of how the werewolf curse worked made a pretty compelling argument that Greyback hadn't had enough soul left to really count as a person. Putting him down was closer to putting down the wargs or other dark magic creatures than killing a human being who could be reformed.

"Any fighting in the house?" Moody asked while I was thinking, switching to full detective mode.

"Just Mr. Wood attacking from upstairs into the yard," Remus explained. He was the obvious choice to take point on the explanations of what happened, and we walked the pair into the backyard and started to describe the fight. Remus had put some stasis charms on Greyback's body and covered it with a sheet in case the neighbors noticed. We'd also held off on repairing the damage to the fixtures until the aurors had a look.

After statements were taken, Greyback's body was frozen and shrunken for transport, and the yard was finally given a barrage of cleaning and repairing spells, there was a bit of chit chat with the two friendly aurors. Despite Oliver's attempts to chat Tonks up about their mutual connections at Hogwarts (which was likely to get him into big trouble with Alexis if she found out), she didn't seem interested in the aspiring professional goalkeeper. Instead, I'd noticed her hanging on Remus' descriptions of his duel with the thin Death Eater. And once she got a second when Remus was showing Moody his muggle entertainment system and Oliver had gone in to take a shower (while we were in less danger from Death Eater attack), she quietly asked me, "Dresden, what's the deal with your landlord?"

"Fought in the war alongside your partner, but he's been mostly getting rich as a muggle novelist since," I told her. Watching her eyes light up, I smirked and mentioned, "And he remembers you as a five-year-old because he knew your mom through your… uncle? Sirius."

" _Shit_ ," she groaned, realizing. "I barely remember 'Uncle Remus.' And _Sirius Black_ is technically my _cousin_." The frown at mentioning Sirius' name wasn't one of a dead war hero relative, and I made a mental note to look into my assumptions about Remus' friends.

"At least he's not as much older than you as he looks?" I mentioned. While he was definitely over a decade older than her, with his transformation-caused premature aging, he looked at least twice her age.

"True," she said. "And he's single?"

"Painfully so," I smiled. I wasn't sure whether she was aware that he was a werewolf. I'd let Moody reveal that secret if she was cleared to know. "But I think he's making some progress working through his issues from the war, so maybe he's ready to date again." Given the bounce in Remus' step after he'd had a night to process finally being free of his old nemesis, I figured that might be an understatement.

"Thanks Dresden," she grinned, elbowing me affectionately. "I promise to only use your terrifying observation skills for good... and for my own personal benefit."

"Floo's fixed!" Remus informed us from inside.

After Moody spent way too long convincing himself that the floo connection was safe enough to use, he and Tonks left and Oliver went home not long after. I got a moment with Bob to confirm that the veil was still damaged, but that floo connections must be robust enough to bridge the cracks. The news over the Wizarding Wireless agreed: the Ministry was pleased that the floo had been restored, but still advised citizens to avoid trying to apparate long distances.

That afternoon, Dumbledore called ahead and showed up to get a firsthand description of the previous evening's attack. "While I'm pleased that your problem with Fenrir Greyback has ended, though perhaps too _permanently_ ," the headmaster mused, "I worry that Walden Macnair and the other may be back at any time to once again attempt to abduct Mr. Dresden." We both nodded, the risk a real one we'd already worried about. "I'd prefer not to confine him to Hogwarts, especially when you two are obviously doing so well. But I don't believe even a Gringotts team would be able to make the wards here impenetrable to dedicated opponents. However…"

"The Fidelius didn't protect the Potters," Remus frowned.

"Without betrayal, it would have. I'm suggesting myself for the secret keeper this time," Dumbledore explained. "And since the primary issue is that at least two Death Eaters have located your home, it seems an efficient solution."

"This is the charm that hides the house for anyone not in on the secret, right?" I asked, vaguely remembering having come across information on the spell. The two men nodded, and I continued, "Will that make it useless for Remus' muggle life?"

"I'll probably have to get a post office box," Remus thought it through out loud. "It may make it difficult to get the telly or the utilities serviced. They may cut them off entirely if they can't remember the service address." He shrugged. "They're conveniences, though, not essential with magic."

"Don't mess up your life just to save me a week at Hogwarts," I told him.

"I'd have to move otherwise," he shook his head and smiled wanly. "Death Eaters are like termites. Really lower the value if they can get into your house." I guess I looked like I was sad I'd brought this down on him and he said, "I consider either option well worth it to finally be quit of Greyback."

"It could well only be a few months before you'd need to move to the school _anyway…_ " Dumbledore twinkled.

"I still haven't agreed to that," Remus told him. "I'd prefer not to be another victim of the curse."

Dumbledore sighed, but could muster no disagreement. "Alas, I have had no more luck finding the source of the curse on the defense professorship than finding the source of the recent attacks."

I straightened up, having forgotten that I'd had a discussion with Bob and come up with a theory. "Professor… when did the defense professors start having problems?"

"After Voldemort, still calling himself Tom Riddle, applied to the position around a quarter of a century ago," Dumbledore admitted.

"Exactly then?" I asked.

"Hmm," he acknowledged my point and gave it more thought. "We didn't lose a professor every year immediately, and there _was_ a war going on so some of the losses were completely explicable rather than unfortunate coincidences. It _is_ possible that it only seems to be something related in hindsight. Do you have a theory, my boy?"

"How many students would you say had their lives in danger between when you put up the fortunamancy wards and the war with Voldemort?" I asked him.

I saw his eyes light up, following me. "Nearly none! I've been such a fool!"

"Catch me up?" Remus asked.

"Hogwarts has a ward to try to bend fortunes to keep students and staff alive," I told him. "But it wasn't actually _needed_ until there was a war going on that spilled over into the school. You can't reduce entropy in one part of a system without just moving it somewhere else. Even in the years after the war, there might have been a ton of entropy still built up in the wards trying to bleed off."

"Correlation does not equal causation," Remus said, getting it. "You've been looking for a curse for two decades, but it wasn't a deliberate curse on the position, just an unintended side effect."

"I'll get right to work examining the wards to see if I can determine why it chose the defense professorship and whether it can be more safely distributed. I only hope poor Gilderoy hasn't already built up a dangerous level of entropy…"

## Wrapped in a Bow

Remus eventually gave in on the Fidelius, so Dumbledore performed the ritual before he left. Whoever had called it a _charm_ was engaging in a fit of vast oversimplification for the purposes of categorization. The spellwork to set it up wasn't quite like building wards, but it was intense. When he left, only the three of us would be able to find the house. He provided Remus a scrap of parchment with the address to show the people he wanted to have access, because the secret could be transmitted by writing (and that immediately struck me as a _huge_ security hole). I also mischievously suggested that the headmaster inform Tonks, _purely_ so there would be a friendly auror who could get access in an emergency.

I quickly realized I'd forgotten about Bob and worried whether he would be affected, but he assured me that it mostly worked on humans and beings whose minds worked similarly, and wouldn't affect him any more than it would a familiar. That was probably another huge hole in the defenses that I might have to bring up someday if the things coming out of the Nevernever began to attack more deliberately.

Christmas morning was another haul that just reminded me how many friends I'd accumulated. I'd spent a lot of time over the fall semester making minor enchanted items for basically everyone, though perhaps even more work had gone to making _The Prince's Potions_. I'd had Remus send me a ream of standard-sized paper and laboriously, using my best penmanship (quillmanship?), transcribed the Half-Blood Prince's improvements to the recipes in my potions book. I'd left out the spells.

Because he, himself, had to use a non-electric typewriter to actually write his novels, Remus had invested in a pretty beefy photocopying machine of the kind you'd need to quickly run off a whole manuscript copy to submit to a publisher. It had its own anti-magic wards in one of his larger closets. It was the perfect thing to create practical copies that weren't in danger of evaporating to a spare counterspell. I'd run off a copy for each of my friends in NEWT-level potions, as well as a copy for Mathilda who hoped to do well enough on her OWLs to take it in her next year.

Remus had gone through it when I was copying and binding, and was impressed. He figured that kind of thing might sell well, though I felt a little weird about stealing someone else's work even if the wizarding world didn't care about copyright. I'd forgotten to ask Dumbledore about whether Severus Snape, the Death Eater who'd died trying to destroy Voldemort, was likely to have called himself the Half-Blood Prince in school.

On the return end of things, most of my friends had gotten me magical materials or gift certificates to the shops at Hogsmeade. The most surprising was a card from the Grangers that had 200 pounds of cash included (the value, not the weight). It also included a stern admonishment that they knew how much I'd done for Hermione, and suspected how valuable her gifts would be at enchanted item shops, so I was not to act like it was too much. They'd obviously figured me out, because I was about to.

I once again wound up with three "mystery" gifts. Dumbledore gave me a book on protean enchantments similar to what I'd done for Filch and Mrs. Norris, all about passing various things between linked objects. An unknown package had a similar wrapping to the tartan scarf I'd received the year before (which I'd eventually found out was the pattern for my mother's clan, the McGregors). It contained an obscure book on focusless transfiguration, which looked helpful. Finally, my godmother had sent a card and two invitations to the Malfoy New Year's Eve party. The card read:

 _As discussed briefly, the rest of your debts will be discharged by keeping the secrets of my guest. You will be introduced at the party, so do please attend. I know you are fashion-challenged, so a suit will arrive for you. -L_

Not really knowing how much debt my godmother thought I had left to discharge, I was vaguely worried about how much it was worth to keep someone's secrets. And then I realized that I probably wouldn't be able to share my suspicions of what had cracked open the veil on the solstice, and my stomach dropped.

That wasn't the only concerning letter I got on Christmas day. Early in the afternoon, a post owl dropped off a short note that was on Ministry parchment in a very formal script. It looked feminine.

 _Mr Dresden. In light of your recent service helping to rid the world of Fenrir Greyback, I would like to meet to discuss potentially rescinding your Doom of Damocles. Please meet me at the Ministry cafeteria for lunch on the 26th. You may respond via the owl that brought this letter._

"The Fidelius has a lot of security holes," I mentioned to Remus while I sought his opinion about the letter. "Owls can make it through."

"Deliberate, I think," he shrugged. "We could put up a ward that kept owls out or redirected them if it was an issue. But usually you want to receive mail, just not enemy visits. Anyway, I think it's safe enough for you to meet on this, though it seems rather clandestine. Someone at the ministry probably thinks they can use you to forward some agenda. If it was completely on the up-and-up, you'd meet at their office."

"About what I figured, thanks," I told him. "I guess I'm going to see what the Ministry's cafeteria is like."

And that's how I found myself in the location in question the next day. The guy at the front desk hadn't really been able to figure out what to do without a wand to scan for an ID badge, but had made due with my blasting rod, even though the output had been gibberish. The whole society was too focused on wands as registration devices. Once you started seeing security holes in how wizards did things, it was hard to stop. No wonder Moody was so paranoid. At least, since I was just meeting someone at the cafeteria, it wasn't too much of an issue.

The room in question was on the main atrium level that I'd flooed into, which was good because sorting out the numbering system for the floors would have been an extra headache. It was fairly large, since it was the choice of Ministry workers that didn't want to scan out and back in to get lunch. While done in the typical woods-and-tapestries decorating style of the wizarding world, its form factor was pretty standard. One wall had food stations with a tray shelf in front of them, and the rest was tables once you'd gotten your food. Apparently, cafeteria architectural design didn't really change much between centuries and cultures.

The room was mostly empty due to it being the holidays, and the note had specifically not suggested that I was being _treated_ to lunch, so I just went ahead and got my own tray, paid for it, and found a table. The offerings were mostly Christmas dinner fare, probably leftovers.

I'd been there maybe fifteen minutes past noon when what I'd assumed was a passing secretary cleared her throat to get my attention, "Hem hem."

My first impression was that the small woman was wearing more pink than I'd seen on anyone outside of kids going to ballet class. The second, uncharitable impression was that the pink was a defense mechanism to indicate that she was a woman at all, or at least a witch and not some female of another magical species. Bob had told me legends of frog people called Fomor in some of our discussions of magical races, and I kind of wondered if she had one in her family tree. She definitely had the Innsmouth look.

Seeing she had a tray and was waiting, I stood and pulled out a chair for her to sit. No reason not to be chivalrous even if the woman in question had to make questionable wardrobe decisions to make it obvious she was female. "Thank you, such a gentleman," she said in a voice that she seemed to deliberately pitching up into a more childish register. I thought maybe she was actually a schoolgirl with that disease that makes you age faster, progeria.

We ate in silence for a few minutes, me finishing up my lunch and her eating a small portion of ham and potatoes. If the cafeteria had been full, I'd have assumed she just wanted a place to sit. Since it was empty, she was either the person I was supposed to meet or just a very lonely office drone.

Finally, after we'd finished, she daintily wiped her mouth on her napkin and said, "Now. You are, of course, aware who I am?"

I shrugged, "Sorry. American."

That seemed to cut through whatever self importance she'd worked up, and she just sniffed, "Ah. Of course. Though I believe your _magical_ ancestors were British?"

"Supposedly," I told her, still confused by the whole conversation. "But she died when I was born, so I was raised pretty similarly to a muggleborn."

"Unfortunate. Though I understand you have some contact with individuals like Lucius Malfoy, who can model appropriate British norms to you?"

I kept the scowl off of my face, barely. She hadn't come out and said it, but I was already getting the vibe from this lady that she was one of the useful bigots Malfoy kept in his faction. "I'm tutoring his son in runes and enchanting," I agreed, instead. "Oh, and I guess I'll be at his New Year's party."

"Excellent! Young Draco has a bright future," she gave me a wide-mouthed smile. "I am, since you are unaware, Senior Undersecretary to the Minister, Delores Umbridge. You may call me Madam Umbridge."

"Harry Dresden," I told her, unnecessarily, but she'd left the pause.

"Quite. I've read your file. Auror Dawlish is quite convinced that you murdered your mentor, a Justin DuMorne. However, Auror Savage and Moody's notes speak to someone being pursued by… undesirable elements. Which is it, Mr. Dresden?"

I didn't trust this woman at all, much less know whether she was another Death Eater, so I tried to keep it simple, "Unfortunately, Dawlish didn't know Justin as well as he thought he did. Neither did I. He tried to do some kind of dark ritual to me and it went wrong. I got out, he didn't. Since then… several other dark wizards and werewolves seem to have it out for me."

She stared at me for a few long moments, clearly trying to get my measure, then decided, "I can work with that. The important part is that Auror Moody's report indicates you were integral to killing Fenrir Greyback. Given his documented attack on you in the summer, and his known proclivities, self defense is much easier to sell."

"Who are we selling it _to_?"

"The Wizengamot, of course," she simpered. "This may be an excellent opportunity to advance my legislation to further protect Britain from werewolves."

"What does that legislation involve?" I asked, dreading the answer.

"While complete success would involve full tracing and eventual relocation to safe reserves as we do with dragons, in the near term I'm confident we can put more restrictions on movement, publish identities and photographs publicly so all citizens will be warned, and compel employers of known werewolves to accept partial responsibility for their indiscretions."

"Would any of that have helped against Greyback?" I asked, the first question that popped into my head while I chewed on the other ramifications.

"Not… directly," she admitted. "But he relied heavily on other werewolves that he had infected to help him stay free of the law. We would either have better ability to surveil them or the ability to charge them for not following the law."

I actually thought about it further, without going with my knee-jerk of disagreeing with her on principle. Remus was an exception to the normal process, according to Bob. Most werewolves _would_ , eventually, succumb to the curse and become dangerous. But would further limiting their options do more than immediately push them all to embrace living outside the law?

"What about including research into how to break the curse? Or at least inventing some kind of protection that keeps it from being able to latch onto victims?" I asked.

She waved a hand as if it was inconsequential, "It's been tried. Your potion professor's work has been the only line of research that's had much result. At the end of the day, they all _chose_ to become werewolves. There is little magic that can overcome that kind of willing decision."

Again, I couldn't actually disagree with her point, as much as it galled me. All my intuition was telling me that this woman was an even worse person to ally myself with than Malfoy. But, in this case, the trade she was offering of getting Dawlish off my back forever might be worth it. As much as I just wanted to tell her to go to hell…

"Can I see the text of the law, before I make a decision?" I asked.

She thought about it, then nodded. "I'll have a copy for you at Malfoy's party. Choose soon, though. I want to propose this at the spring session, and need to include your presence or absence in my plans."

With that, I nodded and we left, me to go home and tell Remus that I might be selling him out to get what I wanted…

## Big Balls

Remus wasn't happy about the impending legislation, but agreed to reserve judgement until we'd seen the actual particulars. It was possible that being mostly in the muggle world would protect him, but it also might play havoc with teaching at Hogwarts. He did undersign my _own_ worries: there was a good chance any further regulation would push werewolves trying to live in society and fight their curse into crime and embracing it.

The next couple of days, however, were pretty chill, and I mostly stayed around the house rather than risking going out in public to give the Death Eaters more shots at me. I'd considered that it might be a funny statement to take Remus as my "date" to Malfoy's party, especially with Umbridge there, but it had a high risk of him making connections when I met my godmother's "guest."

Also, I realized Mathilda would be upset if she found out I had a plus one and didn't take her to one of the premiere Ministry events of the season. It was getting harder and harder to pretend she wasn't my girlfriend. It was also getting harder and harder to keep _her_ from figuring out the edges of the situation with my godmother. We'd met up for lunch the day before so I could show her the card that would actually let her get past Remus' fidelius for the date.

A few hours before the party, an owl arrived with another card from my godmother.

 _A Fidelius? Clever and useful. However, please go outside to accept delivery of your suit -L_

Bemused, I let myself out of the house and out the back gate onto the nature preserve, glancing around to make sure none of the neighbors were watching. A few minutes later, there was a quiet pop, and a small, malformed humanoid appeared bearing a garment bag. He was bald, with extremely oversized eyes and ears, wearing nothing more than a pillowcase. I hadn't actually seen too many house elves in person, as the ones at Hogwarts liked to stay hidden.

"Dobby has brought Harry Dresden Lefayson his suit!" the tiny man warbled.

"Thank you, Dobby," I told him, taking the black bag from him. It was hand-tailored from a nice canvas.

"Harry Dresden Lefayson thanks Dobby, and says his name! He is a credit to his mother and his godmother!" he choked out.

"Wait, you knew my mother?" I asked, remembering that Malfoy had said her nickname was LeFay.

"Oh, not _personally_ , sir. But she was a great witch! Very kind to house elves! Dobby's own family has never mistreated him, due to her good example, as well as Strange Mistress."

"I didn't know that," I told him. "Thank you for the information. And for bringing this."

Quietly muttering his own thanks, the elf bowed and then snapped his fingers to disapparate away.

Returning back inside, I found that the suit was an extremely nice mixture of black and dark purple, intricately embroidered, but felt like conjuration. The buttons were a completely transparent glass. Another card was inside from my godmother.

 _Since this is meant to be a celebration of the turning of the year, I shall give you until midnight in Greenland instead of local time before you must be home. -L_

Faerie godmother jokes, that's what we'd come to. I guessed that meant the conjuration would wear out around two in the morning, but I'd try to get back by one just in case. Fully withdrawing the suit, I saw that it wasn't that different from a normal tuxedo with an overly long jacket (though lacking the same fashion genes like bow ties that had evolved due to muggle trends). I understood that "dress robes" similarly meant "dresses" for witches, since they enjoyed party wear that actually fit, as opposed to robes designed to keep you warm in an unheated wizard's tower. There are only so many ways to best show off the human body at a party.

Speaking of witches and dresses, I wasn't actually expecting mine to show up in one so nice. "You look great!" I told Mathilda, as she stepped out of Remus' fireplace. She'd gone with a dark red strapless dress with gold jewelry, aggressively Gryffindor.

"You too!" she said, checking me out in a suit that actually fit. "I didn't know you had a suit. Or were interested in parties!"

"I got specifically invited, and it seemed _political_ ," I told her. "And the suit evaporates an hour or two after midnight."

"Kinky," she grinned, taking my arm. As she did, I noticed the purple in my suit subtle shift in color to better compliment her dress.

We were about to head out but Remus yelled, "Pictures!" He must have caught my smirk that he was suddenly going all parental on me, and said, "When you're older, you'll regret not having more documentation of the good days." If my smile in the pictures he took was a little sad, it was because I was thinking of him having lost all of his school friends.

A minute later, though, thoughts of Remus' history were blown from my head by taking in the Malfoy mansion. We stepped out of the fireplace into a den that must have been as big as Remus' entire house. Furniture had been cleared out to make a receiving room, with a short line of guests in finery walking up to talk to the Malfoys before grabbing a drink from a server and then heading out into the rest of the house.

"Glad you could make it, Mr. Dresden," Lucius Malfoy told me when he greeted me. "A shame Mr. Weasley and Ms. Clearwater couldn't make it, as well."

Ah, so that's how he was playing this? Inviting them would be good cover for why I was actually here. "Protective parents," I shrugged. "I'm sure they're sad to miss it."

He nodded and passed me to what could only be his wife, Narcissa Malfoy née Black. She looked a fair bit like her sister and her niece, Tonks, but was very blond. "Mr. Dresden. A pleasure to finally meet you. So tall, like your mother." Her pleasant tone didn't _completely_ reach her eyes, but I didn't get the impression she hated me on principle or anything.

"Likewise," I told her. "You knew my mother at school, I guess?"

"Far more than that," she corrected. "After all, she was over at our house all the time during the holidays, best friends as she was with my sister." With that last, she widened her eyes slightly and glanced over at the server by the door, releasing me to head over.

While the brown-haired waitress in subdued greens and grays didn't _look_ anything like my godmother, her posture was as perfect as Narcissa's, and the half-mad look of amusement over the tray of wine glasses was instantly recognizable. "Polyjuice?" I asked, quietly, taking the offered glass of wine.

"Thank you for the reminder," she said, voice deeper than her natural tone but using her normal cadence. She took a small crystal flask from her apron and used me as cover to take a swig. "That hour limit is inconvenient."

"No society matrons who couldn't make it but could donate some hair?"

"The servants hear so much more," she grinned.

"They don't usually go to finishing school, though," I told her. She quirked an eyebrow and I explained, "Your posture is too good."

"Such a helpful boy," she told me, relaxing her stance slightly. She was still not perfect, but wouldn't stand out as much. I was actually kind of pleased that my godmother was so bad at espionage, since it made it harder for her to trick _me_ if she thought it would be amusing. "Enjoy the party. I'll introduce you to our guest later." Mathilda had finally extricated herself from the receiving line and had joined me, taking a wine glass. Bellatrix looked my date over as she turned away and shot me an approving nod.

"The ball room is this way," Mathilda guided me. "This is the third time I've been here! They usually just invite former Slytherins. Think we need to watch our backs all night?"

We had traveled a relatively short distance down a high-ceilinged hallway that was appointed with all kinds of portraits and expensive-looking bric-a-brac before turning into the ballroom. The den had been bigger than Remus' house, and the ballroom was pretty close to on par with Hogwarts' great hall. Without magical heating and house elves to clean, I wouldn't be able to imagine how they kept up a house like this. The room was swarming with richly-dressed couples, and I nodded Mathilda toward a few, "Looks like we have a little bit of backup." I'd noticed several people from Dumbledore's secret order of Gryffindors, including all three of the elder Longbottoms.

The evening was… strangely pleasant. There was a string quartet. There were abundant snacks. Mathilda and I were probably not remotely prepared to have nobody blink at handing us wine. We eventually found ourselves on the dance floor, and Mathilda noted, surprised, "You can dance!"

"Justin insisted on lessons for some reason," I told her. "Got good enough that the teacher suggested that _I_ could teach as an option. I'm tall enough to partner with anyone."

"Well I'm glad! Maybe we'll have to do more of these."

"Are they all super political?" I asked, giving her a twirl, her loose reddish-brown hair flaring around her shoulders.

"No. Well, yes! But you can stay out of it," she said as she completed the spin. "They need ordinary people to fill out the room! If everyone was political, no dancing would get done."

"So if we just stay out on the dance floor, nobody will try to talk me into anything else political?" I asked.

"One way to find out," Mathilda grinned.

Of course, even staying on the dance floor, my hearing was too good to stay out of politics entirely. As we moved past a small older man who had opted for a more robelike green outfit to hide his girth, all topped with a lime green bowler hat, I overheard him talking to his dance partner. "Ah, yes. Turns out she's one of Abraxas' little secrets, from shortly before he passed. Barely older than young Draco, but technically _Lucius'_ sister. At least her mother was a pureblood, even if she's illegitimate. Lovely people, the Malfoys, taking her in and sending her to Hogwarts now that they've discovered her."

On consideration, I _had_ noticed a young woman in the orbit of the Malfoys who had the family's distinctive platinum hair. Before I could look for her again, Mathilda whispered, "Why is _he_ paying so much attention?"

I glanced where she was looking, and saw that a tall, older wizard was observing us clinically from near one of the food tables. "Who is he?" I asked.

"Nott," she said. "One of the marked people that pled imperius."

"Like Draco's friend?" I asked, making a connection to the small dark-haired Slytherin that had been looking like he was trying to talk to me all year.

"His father," Mathilda agreed.

Without seeing him move, I couldn't be sure, but the height and build was right, "Think he might be the skinny Death Eater that's been after me?" I asked her.

"I didn't get a great look. But could be!" she agreed.

"Glad we have some backup here, then." I told her. "If we get separated, don't get anywhere near him."

"Definitely!" she frowned, the likely presence of the guy that'd been trying to capture me for months bringing down the fun of the evening.

I spent so much effort keeping an eye on Nott for the rest of the evening, that I didn't think about the mysterious Malfoy bastard again until much later. It was after midnight, we'd had a nice New Year's kiss, and were relaxing at a table while getting ready to leave when the server that I knew was my godmother got my attention and gave a very significant look to the approaching Lucius Malfoy and the young woman on his arm.

Her hair was, indeed, platinum blond, almost white, and from a distance I hadn't noticed that it was actually in dreadlocks. While she was incredibly slender and fitted in a blue gown fit for nobility, I caught hints of multiple piercings that had been removed for the party. Despite going for the punk vibe, she couldn't help but move with a noble bearing even more polished than the Black sisters.

And her glacier-blue eyes had the same madness as my godmother's.

"Mr. Dresden. Ms. Grimblehawk," Lucius explained as we stood from our table to greet them. "I don't think you've been introduced. This is my half-sister, from Ireland. We've only recently discovered her. She'll be transferring to Hogwarts next week as a fifth year. While she'll be in Slytherin, we'd all appreciate it if you could help her get acclimated, having transferred in late yourself."

I nodded, knowing I had no choice. Mathilda stiffened slightly next to me, and I took a glance. Her polite expression was very forced, and I thought there was a hint of suppressed emotions, possibly envy or jealousy: up close, the new "Malfoy" was _impossibly_ attractive, and her presence felt like ice, rebellion, temptation, and _sex_ , clawing at my mind. It was taking a lot of effort to keep my brain realizing that it was an aura and not a natural reaction. I didn't know exactly how it was hitting Mathilda.

"Please. We're going to treat each other as great friends, I can tell," she said insouciantly in an Irish accent. "Call me Maeve."

## Representatives

It took a couple of weeks after the holidays for Dumbledore to have time to discuss things on a weekend that Remus was at Hogwarts. The three of us, as well as McGonagall, were ensconced in Dumbledore's office. I'd gotten a draft of the werewolf legislation from Umbridge at the Malfoy party, and Remus had seen it already but Dumbledore hadn't.

"I'm forced to concur with Remus," Dumbledore said, looking over the parchment. "This will simply drive more of the cursed into lives of crime. The only slight fortune is that they no longer have Greyback to rally around."

"He had lieutenants," Remus argued. "It's been too long for me to know if any of them is strong enough to step up and take over, or if they'd fracture into separate packs with the influx."

"Why now?" McGonagall asked. "It seems, without Greyback, there might actually be less threat from them for some time."

"Delores has a cabinet full of legislation she hopes to pass, just awaiting an event that she can use to justify it," Dumbledore explained. "If Mr. Dresden had triumphed over a murderous centaur or merfolk, there would likely be a corresponding bill forwarded."

"That woman," my head of house grumbled. "If she'd concentrated half as hard on her schoolwork as she did on her phobias, she would have had a much more superlative tenure at Hogwarts."

"How did she become a senior undersecretary?" I asked.

McGonagall shrugged, but Dumbledore explained, "She's dreadfully organized, and tracks favors as easily as paperwork. The Ministry is largely divided to those that find her useful and those over whom she has some form of leverage. Ultimately, she's risen above her competence and her opinions aren't too much of a threat, so I have not expended the influence to uproot her." He fixed me with a gaze over his spectacles, "I, of course, caution you about becoming one of those favors unnecessarily."

" _Could_ she get my Doom lifted?" I asked.

The old man shrugged. "Potentially. I believe she's friends with John Dawlish and has the influence to rescind it if he does not object. Whether she actually would go through with it, or just string you along, I cannot speculate."

"How much _would_ this bill affect Remus?"

"It wouldn't actually prevent me from hiring him as a professor, but public registration would likely lead to quite a few letters from concerned parents until he proved himself competent. And if there were any kind of accident, it would be used against the school." He read down and tapped another section, "And this part about restriction of movement _seems_ intended as a tracking measure, but might actually have teeth to curtail Remus' activities in the magical or muggle worlds should someone in authority so desire."

"That's what I was afraid of," the werewolf in question said. "I'd be grudgingly okay with it if I thought that anyone who might eventually have that authority would use is wisely. Or if it wouldn't disproportionately affect werewolves trying to follow the law."

"So I back out," I shrugged. "I have enough problems without getting involved with politics unless that's going to solve some of them."

"Well… actually," Remus amended. "I wonder if there's a way you can back it while doing more harm than good for it passing…"

" _Marauders_ ," McGonagall scoffed. "Trying to prank the Ministry now."

Dumbledore considered and said, "That might actually be possible. I shall begin talking to Wizengamot members and finding out whether there are any wedge issues that could be highlighted by Mr. Dresden to the disadvantage of the bill."

I shrugged my agreement with the plan, turning it into a stretch and looking around the room. I hadn't had much time to look the place over when I'd come through to take Penny to Manchester. Fawkes was sleeping on his perch, and looked much better, his burning day having come and gone, though he was still quite small compared to his full size. All the portraits of former headmasters watching us was disconcerting, but Dumbledore had silenced them for our discussion. I was very curious about several of the miscellaneous artifacts scattered around, that seemed more like magical machines than enchanted items. One of them was even occasionally puffing smoke like a miniature steam engine.

While I was looking around, he moved on, "And now, you suspect Mr. Nott of being our mystery Death Eater?"

I nodded, "The height and build check out, and he was glaring at me for the entire party."

The headmaster pursed his lips, eventually admitting, "Unfortunately, without further proof, there may be little we can do. He is one of the most slippery of the men that were once part of the organization. I shall place observers to try to catch him doing something illegal. At the very least, it should limit his ability to act against you further."

I huffed, "That's what I was worried about. _How_ did so many Death Eaters get to just go back to their lives after the war?"

"Wealth and privilege," the old man shrugged apologetically. "We were never able to prove that the Dark Mark had to be willingly accepted with a clear mind, and Wizengamot members enjoy a great deal of protections originally designed to prevent the laws from being used to harass rival members of the government. This includes freedom from interrogation under Veritaserum, and other techniques." McGonagall and Remus were clearly annoyed, and Dumbledore put up his hands, "I still believe that they have legitimate uses. The machinations of the Dark would certainly use such tools against their rivals if not prevented by law."

McGonagall sighed, "Some days, it seems like everything designed to protect good people is just another shield that can be used by the bad."

"Alas," he agreed, "there is no bulwark that cannot be toppled upon those it defends. Yet we erect castle walls anyway, for they do more good than harm. Government is the same."

And that was it for the meeting, except for a little more small talk. I exited the descending magical staircase and started to head back to my room, but I got intercepted.

"Harry!" Maeve called, stepping out of an intersecting passageway. "You've been avoiding me."

I had been. Without the elaborate party dress showing off her body and a few glasses of wine softening up my willpower, it was a lot easier to shrug off her aura. Or, I worried, maybe she'd deliberately toned it down at school but could turn it back _up_ whenever she wanted. Either way, since I didn't exactly know what she _was_ well enough to know if I could fight her if I had to and because I was bound to avoid turning other people against her based on my suspicions, I'd been staying as far as possible from her. But my luck had run out. "The deal was keeping your secrets," I shrugged, grudgingly. "Doesn't mean I have to help whatever you're doing here."

"Such distrust. What did I ever do to you?" she asked, her face a mask of sadness that didn't reach her eyes, or her joking tone of voice. She'd put her numerous piercings back in, and she was clearly wearing some kind of muggle graphic t-shirt under her uniform robes, Doc Martens with poison-green laces kicking out rebelliously from under the hem.

The scary thing was, if I hadn't been forewarned, I'd probably think she was cool as hell, and worth hanging out with. If Tonks had leaned into the sexy punk-rock girl stereotype, Maeve had _weaponized_ it. She'd been at school less than a month, and I'd already noticed her wrapping a fan club around her and not just in Slytherin. Seeing that no one was nearby in the hallways, I stopped and leaned against a wall, facing her, rather than making her walk and talk. "You, specifically? I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure months of Nevernever creatures trying to eat me and my friends were all about _getting_ you here, though."

She didn't deny it, just gave me a non-genuine pout and said, "C'mon, Harry. You've been groomed for this. I've seen you wrapping Gryffindor and Ravenclaw around yourself, and you're not even trying. I'll grab Slytherin and Hufflepuff and we'll meet in the middle. It'll be worth your while." That last was said with a breathy Irish lilt, and she flared her aura a bit, causing me to heat up.

But part of that heating up was anger from her trying to manipulate me so obviously. "One, don't do that again, or I'll take it as an _attack_ ," I growled at her. "Two, what are you here for? Why do you want to make everyone at the school your friends?"

Her mien of being a laid-back rebel cracked after my first sentence, a glare of angry entitlement slipping out. I didn't think she liked not just getting her way. But she visibly forced it down, allowed the nonchalant cool girl vibe to settle in again, before explaining, "I can tell you honestly: I'm here to be the best representative of the school I can possibly be." She flipped her dreadlocks over a shoulder, and got ready to head out. "Think about it, Harry. I know you're not obligated to help me beyond keeping my confidence. So I'd owe you a _favor_ , if you did."

"We'll see," I told her, and she sashayed off. If my guesses were right and she was a true sidhe from the other side of the Veil, incapable of lying, then what she'd said was true.

But what did it _mean_?


	24. Dark Room 10: Heavy Heart

## Ophiuchus

Friday evening a couple of weeks into the school year was a new moon, and it was pitch black outside the castle, albeit with clear skies. Perfect for stargazing if you could stand the cold, but there weren't astronomy classes on Fridays.

After dinner, most of Gryffindor was relaxing in the common room. I was about halfway through a novel from the pile of "muggle pulp" that the Weasley twins and I _hadn't_ shelved around the library when Katie Bell walked into the room from outside and told me, "Harry. The headmaster needs to see you in his office." She wasn't in her quidditch gear, but for some reason she had her boom slung over a shoulder.

"Okay. Thanks, Katie," I told her, marking my place and heading out, shrugging at Percy and Mathilda that I had no idea what was going on.

I'd made it down a couple of floors before I realized I had no idea what the password was for Dumbledore's office, either. He usually sent some arbitrary candy name when he wanted to meet. Or at least he had when I'd talked to him a couple of days previously, and everyone had said that was normal.

Maybe it was still the same password? But I'd thought of it close enough to the dorm to figure I could turn around and check with Katie to see if she'd forgotten to tell me.

By the time I climbed back up the stairs, staff thudding along to assist, it was to see the backs of several Gryffindor robes rushing away from the portrait, into the hallway that was the shortest way to the astronomy tower, past the tapestry with the dancing trolls. "What's going on? I asked Neville, who was already puffing a bit trying to keep up with the crowd.

"Katie!" he gasped. "Said she was going to jump off the tower! Flew her broom out of her window!"

Damnit. Thinking back, I hadn't been paying much attention to her, but something _had_ been off. Suffering through a bout of depression?

I raced ahead, my long legs and somewhat reasonable attempts to exercise sometimes easily letting me outpace Neville, and then overtake several of the other lower-years. By the time I crashed out onto the astronomy tower landing, pretty much half the house was gathered. It was a bit of a tight fit, for all that there was space for a couple-dozen students to stargaze at once.

Everyone was staring out over the railing, and I could barely make out Katie, mostly by lit wands reflecting off her eyes and face, floating on her broom at least twenty feet away from the tower. But she was mostly visible as a shadow against the stars. My Acceptable-level astronomy knowledge eventually coughed up that the constellation she was outlined by was Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer. That wasn't ominous or anything.

There was also what seemed like enough distance to hit terminal velocity between her and the ground, or at least fast enough that not even Madam Pomfrey could save her.

"Don't do this, Katie!" Oliver was insisting, taking the lead trying to talk her into landing.

"We tried the seize-and-pull charm," Percy told me in a whisper as he saw me clear the landing. "She shielded but she does not actually seem to want to jump."

"You'll be better off without me," Katie told him, her voice nearly monotone, though a hint of genuine pain underneath. "I'm useless. Ginny's so much better than I was as seeker. I cost the team the cup last year."

Oliver _had_ worried that Katie had been carrying guilt for that all year, but the girl otherwise seemed happy. Teen depression was no joke, but I didn't think that was what was going on here. "Imperius?" I asked Percy. His mouth pinched as he considered it, and he nodded that he thought it was likely. Whispering, I told him, "Anything we get around her shield is likely to knock her off the broom." And I wasn't willing to rely on Dumbledore's fortune wards to somehow save her from hitting the ground starting this high up.

"The libertas charm…" he suggested.

"We still haven't gotten it to work!" I hissed.

Oliver had overheard and looked back at us, his eyes narrowing in conviction. I saw him moving his wand by his side, reminding himself of the wand gesture he'd seen in our research sessions. "Katie. Nobody cares about that. You're doin' a great job as chaser! Come back down, please!"

"You'll be better off without me," she stated again, almost like reading off a script.

"Fight it, Katie!" Oliver nearly shouted, then whipped his wand up, " _Libero_!"

The light of the spell spun silver and cerulean through the air, and it, like the unforgivables, punched right through her hasty shield. It splashed against her torso then flared out of her eyes. The glow was gone as fast as it had arrived, leaving her once again in the dim light from the tower, but I thought I saw her blink and shake her head. "How did I get… woah! Make a hole!"

She easily brought the broom down to the roof of the tower in the space we made for her, and stepped off shakily. Alicia and Angelina tackled the girl, sobbing, rapidly explaining how much they loved her in an indecipherable torrent of words. Several other students weren't far behind.

"Amazing!" Percy told Oliver, who was sagging in relief. "What did you feel?"

"Pride, I think," the quidditch captain told us. "I was just feelin' how much I respected her. How much I disagreed with what she'd been sayin'."

"Of course!" my other roommate exclaimed. "It is not how you are feeling, but about how you feel about the target. Forges a connection to allow their own self-confidence to overpower the curse." He looked more excited about solving the mystery of the spell than saving the girl, but I was sure he'd be concerned when the thrill of the puzzle faded. "Good job, Oliver! Penny will be so excited!"

For my own part, I was glad to finally have an answer to the spell and that Katie was safe, but something was nagging at the back of my mind. "She must have been commanded to send me away…" I thought out loud.

Mathilda, who'd extricated herself from the group hug, asked, "They knew you'd solve it? Needed you out of the way. No! They didn't try to stop any other upper-years. Any of us could have saved her eventually…"

"My blood," I told them. "This year has been all about trying to keep me alive to steal my blood. So either this was another distraction to keep you guys from interfering in another kidnap attempt, or…"

"Or they wanted to keep you out of danger!" Oliver shouted, staring down the doorway back into the castle. I whipped around and saw an immense shadow climbing up the spiral stairs, blotting out the torchlight from the stairwell. "Close the door!" Oliver yelled at those close by it.

It was the second-year crew, and they had enough run-ins with danger to not second-guess orders like that. Neville, Ron, and Seamus shouldered the heavy door closed, and Hermione yelled, " _Colloportus_!" to lock it.

They were almost too slow, because a moment later, there was a horrendous wet crash against the door, as if some massive beast was trying to shoulder it open. Even with the locking spell, the sturdy oak door flexed against its hinges. "Barricades!" I ordered the upper years close to me who could actually do those spells quickly.

Between Oliver, Percy, and Alexis, they quickly conjured chains and braces to hold the door as the rest of the kids backed out of the way. There were three more massive thuds against the door, but the buttressing held, and then it stopped. I held up a hand to halt the panicked talking and listened, hearing something heavy rasping against the stone steps, gradually fading away back down.

"That was _not_ a gorgon, Harry!" Mathilda insisted.

Katie said, "But it was! The woman in the hood! That's who cursed me. I remember! I was studying in the library and she came up out of nowhere! Told me to do all those things!" Since she'd just had a near-death experience, I withheld chastising her for forgetting to travel in groups as if the problem had just been solved over the holidays. To be fair, I'd forgotten about it too, both times I'd gone to Dumbledore's office.

Hugging Mathilda with a squeeze that tried to convey "you were right," I said, "I don't think it's actually a gorgon… I think there's a monster, and a Death Eater who's a woman in a hood that likes to use the imperius."

The murmuring of the students seemed to generally imply that that made sense to everyone. I suddenly realized that I was hugging Mathilda as much out of sharing body heat as anything else, and, as the adrenaline wore off, everyone else started to shiver, realizing they were outside after dark in January in north Scotland.

Teeth chattering, Hermione asked what everyone was thinking, "Do… do you think it's safe to go back in?"

We waited another twenty minutes in the cold before the danger of freezing to death outside overcame the risk of the seemingly long-departed Slytherin's monster. We moved inside cautiously, slowly, checking around corners with our bronze mirrors.

"It basically has to be Pince," I explained, quietly, to the people at the front.

Mathilda confirmed, "Dean and Cormac were coming out of the library!"

Oliver added, "She was missin' at the Halloween feast!"

"And she came back from her librarian con this summer in a bad mood, and complaining about muggles," I finished.

Percy asked, "But where would she even _get_ a basilisk?"

"Hopefully she can tell us when we… well, when Dumbledore confronts her," I shrugged.

"Thank Merlin!" McGonagall swore as the bulk of her house rounded the corner to the bottom of the Gryffindor stairs. "Where have you all been?"

"Long story," I told her, speaking for the group. "Basically, someone imperiused Katie to lure us up to the astronomy tower into an attack from the creature. We think it might have been Madam Pince."

"That is… unfortunate," the assistant headmistress' lips pursed. She quickly incanted a messenger patronus, sending her silver cat to say, "Albus. I've found the rest of Gryffindor. They believe Irma set the monster on them." The message away, she gestured us all up the stairs, "Everyone, back inside while we check."

Oliver, Mathilda, Percy, and I hung toward the back, dawdling on the way in, clearly hesitant to leave her to go confront the librarian alone.

McGonagall shook her head at our obstinance, but said, "Mr. Wood and Mr. Dresden are adults, and can make their own poor decisions for risk, but Mr. Weasley and Ms. Grimblehawk, please get inside."

"Be careful, Harry," Mathilda said, grudgingly, and gave me a kiss for luck. Percy gave Oliver a clap on the shoulder, before the two of them went into the Gryffindor common room.

"Now, why do you suspect Irma?" McGonagall asked, as Oliver and I flanked her and started heading toward the library.

We outlined our suppositions, and I finished with, "...and everyone kept thinking they saw a witch. I was thinking gorgon for the longest time, but it could have been a grown or nearly-grown woman leading around a basilisk. Cormac said he saw a big shadow."

"She _has_ been acting more aloof since this summer," McGonagall admitted. "But I find it very hard to believe that she is a secret supporter of You-Know-Who!"

"Didn't you think the same thing about Quirrell?" I asked, remembering that he had been the muggle studies professor before leaving the school, becoming possessed, and returning to teach defense.

"Quirinus was too young to have had the opportunity, but it wasn't altogether shocking that he was turned," she explained. "Irma was at the school during most of the war and never showed any signs of being a traitor."

"Maybe someone convinced her at the library conference," I shrugged.

"Or put her under the imperius?" Oliver suggested.

I nodded. Apparently long-term cursed sleeper agents hadn't been unheard of, though few had the power to maintain the curse for that long, and only the truly weak-willed could be mind-controlled into casting unforgivables of their own. "Good thing we've got the libertas, now." McGonagall made a questioning noise, so I explained, "Oliver cracked it. That's how we saved Katie."

"I shall hold off on awarding points until the four of you can present your research, but very good!" she told us.

Oliver made a self-deprecating wave, "The big brains figured 't'out. I just had the opportunity."

"We'd still be stuck if it weren't for that opportunity, man," I told him.

Finally, we rounded the bend before the door into the library, and saw Dumbledore outside, having pulled off his spectacles to rub the headache from between his eyes. He noticed us arriving, and said, "Unfortunately, this has become more complicated."

Gesturing that it was safe to enter, we went inside and spied the frozen-but-still-flesh body of Madam Pince, sprawled near one of the walls, clearly having turned toward a window. Her witch's hat had fallen off her head in her flailing. I'd guessed she'd tried to look away, but caught the reflection in the glass.

Weirdly, the thing that stood out the most to me was her uncovered head. Most of the staff loved their pointy hats and wore them a lot, particularly Dumbledore, but I didn't think I'd ever seen Pince without hers. She kept her dark hair short, and it seemed to be thinning. A red line from the hatband was likely frozen into her forehead and temples.

"Can we check her arm?" I asked, pointing at the left forearm where the Death Eater tattoos were common.

Dumbledore waved his wand and her sleeve rolled up, clothing not caught in the paralyzation effect. Her pale arm was bare of any tattoos. "Alas, if Irma was behind this, the creature may have turned on her. It will be months before we can revive her and ask what happened."

I hoped we had months, because our best lead had just been yanked right from underneath us.

## Confidence

" _Libero!_ " I incanted, spelling Oliver, who'd gamely stepped into my ritual circle. I really needed to finish working on my project to make a focus that could cast soulfire-based spells (I'd started referring to them as the Apologies and everyone else told me to please stop). This one, in particular, wasn't that useful if it required a whole ritual working to perform.

"That's a rush!" the Scottish keeper said, eyes flaring silver, so at least I'd gotten it right.

"That's four for four!" Penny said, excited. We'd gathered in our favorite abandoned classroom for the testing, and had each been able to replicate the spell. "Now, let's see if it can do anything else we can test safely. Percy?"

" _Confundo!_ " the Weasley prefect snapped out while pointing his wand toward me.

I immediately lost the thread of what was going on, until Penny cast, " _Libero!_ " and the confusion ended as suddenly as it had begun. My eyes focused (though the dilation after the light flaring out of them left everything momentarily dark) and I gave her a thumbs-up. It really _was_ a rush, my self-confidence and mental strength briefly supercharged enough to fight off the effect.

"Yay!" the blond Ravenclaw actually hopped in her excitement, sending her curly hair bouncing into the air. "If this is a general counter against mental effects, it will have so many uses!"

Percy nodded, "Simply working as a prophylactic against possible imperius exposure would have it get used, but if it generally clears any kind of mental impairment, it might wind up as a standard security method at the Ministry. Unfortunately, I do not believe we can easily test lesser compulsions."

"No' even any in your big repertoire?" Oliver asked him.

"They are extremely frowned upon outside of warding," Percy explained, "and that just to subtly redirect muggles and animals away from the warded site. I believe there is always a brisk trade in them amongst certain types of wizard, of course. But they are not taught even at the NEWT level curriculum."

"I'm sure when the Ministry replicates our spell, they'll test it in many more conditions," Penny shrugged. "We've got enough to make it worth their while."

"So you're done?" Oliver asked. "Got your application to the Department of Mysteries all set?"

"Extra credit?" she asked me and Percy. "I'd like to try to go ahead and create the other two. We've got another year and a half to work on it. Might as well pad the CV?"

Percy agreed, and I nodded absently. I'd been thinking about the issue of compulsions.

"Hit me again?" I asked her.

Penny nodded, confused, but cast, " _Libero!_ "

While under the surge of the spell, I tried to blurt out, "My godmother is Bellatrix Lestrange." But the words wouldn't come. I tried, "You can't trust Maeve Malfoy," to the same result. Having a brain wave, I then tried to tell them, "Remus Lupin lives on Heath End Road in High Wycombe," and also couldn't force that out. And the feeling in each of the cases was extremely similar: my brain failing to connect to my tongue.

"Alright, Harry?" Oliver asked.

"I can confirm it doesn't let you break a fidelius," I told them, more frustration evident in my voice because I couldn't seem to explain what I was _really_ trying to break. I'd had suspicions that my unwillingness to report on my godmother and her plots wasn't entirely natural, but now I'd had it confirmed in excruciating detail. I couldn't even seem to tell them what I'd really been trying.

"Interesting," Percy said, musing, "I suspect that is because the fidelius is not a compulsion to keep the secret, but an actual magical manipulation of how knowledge can be used."

"Good to know, regardless," Penny nodded, adding that to her notes.

We did some more testing and began planning to diagram the cruciatus curse, but my thoughts were elsewhere. As soon as we wrapped up, I got to our room ahead of Percy and Oliver, slipped Bob's skull out of my trunk and into my bag of holding, and moved off to another empty classroom. I took extra care to lock and silence the door.

Feeling safe enough to talk, I roused Bob and explained, "I can't tell my friends about my godmother or Maeve. Feels like the fidelius. Wait, why can I tell _you_?"

"The same reason I can be at Remus' house," the spirit of intellect explained. "I don't really _count_ in the same way."

"So could I tell _you_ that my godmother is Bellatrix Black-Lestrange and she's brought Maeve Malfoy into this world for nefarious purposes, and then have you tell Mathilda?" I reasoned.

"Nah," the skull drawled. "Not without giving me the ability to tell future owners your secrets, making Mathilda my owner, and _still_ risking blowing my mind apart. Secret magic is complicated. Consider me basically like external storage for your own knowledge, as far as the magic is concerned."

I sighed, having suspected it wouldn't be that easy. "So why can't I talk about it? Nobody ever did a ritual like the fidelius involving my godmother's secrets."

"Well… they did," Bob hedged. "Think of her as her own secret keeper. Dumbledore could tell someone else Remus' address, and then they wouldn't be able to pass it on, even though they weren't there for the initial ritual. Only she gets a lot more leeway about what counts as a secret, especially when it's things told or shown to you in her role as your teacher." He paused for a moment, then his eyes brightened, "Also, did you say _Maeve Malfoy_?"

I realized I hadn't actually caught Bob up on what happened at the New Year's party. "Well, Malfoy almost certainly isn't her real last name. Impossibly attractive girl with white hair in dreadlocks. I'm pretty sure she's what came through and broke the Veil. Bellatrix transferred the rest of my debt to her to mean I had to keep her secrets, too. But she's already trying to get me to help her take over Hogwarts or something."

As soon as I'd given her description, Bob's eyeflames had started to tighten to pinpoints, and his voice wavered out, "Don't tell the Winter Maiden about me Harry, please."

"I wasn't going to… but why?"

"Her mother is probably still _upset_ with me. If they don't know where to find me, it's better," he hedged.

"Okay, so, who is her mother? And who is she?"

"She's the daughter of Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness herself," and I could feel him dropping in the capital letters.

I frowned, getting the picture that the crown princess of the Winter Court was walking around Hogwarts pretending to be a fifth-year. "I need to figure out why she's really here." Not that I thought she'd give me a straight answer if I asked her, particularly without incurring additional debt.

I wondered if I could subtly hinder her takeover of the school's ongoing popularity contest without being able to reveal any of her secrets. If she wanted to be the school's representative, the best way to thwart her plans would be to keep her from achieving that.

I just needed to socially outmaneuver an immortal fae princess in the middle of an ongoing basilisk attack. No pressure.

## Metal Heart

"Am I your _valentine_!?" squealed the ghost, face scrunching up in excitement behind her massive glasses, dark pigtails quivering.

I'd made a strategic investigation error.

There had still been no attacks since Pince was petrified, but I didn't think it was over with and I'd been working on leads. I'd remembered that Dumbledore mentioned "Ms. Warren" as the girl who died in the 40s under similar circumstances. It took a bit of research to track her down as Myrtle Warren, a bunch of dead ends trying to find documentation of her death, and then _finally_ someone mentioned that "Moaning Myrtle" was a ghost that haunted a girls' bathroom: the same bathroom where Mrs. Norris was attacked.

I'd angrily made an appointment with Dumbledore just to yell about it.

The old wizard could only suggest that he'd tried to question the ghost several times over the decades, and she was highly irrational and unwilling to talk about it in any kind of sensible way. Most of his previous attempts had resulted in her throwing a tantrum and flooding the bathroom rather than giving up any useful information. He admitted he might have so relegated her to the back of his mind out of annoyance that he didn't even think about questioning her during the new crisis, but he invited me to do so.

He was, of course, not joining me.

The way the timing worked out, the first opportunity I had to talk to her after realizing I needed to was the Hogsmeade weekend for Valentine's Day. I'd thought about how there would be fewer people to object to me going into the second floor girls' bathroom on the Sunday without really thinking through the implications to a socially anxious ghost.

I was honestly surprised she still kept up with the calendar. Most ghosts didn't.

I would have done it Saturday, but I actually had to take my soon-going-to-have-to-admit-she's-my-girlfriend on a date. Things had gotten kind of tense, because it turned out picking a rumor fight with Maeve was a bad idea. I couldn't really tell people why they should be wary of her. She couldn't outright lie. It should have been an even fight. But I was way outgunned by someone used to sidhe politics. A school was no trouble. The fae princess had figured out what I was doing too fast, and started implying that I was sneaking out with her romantically and was complaining about her as a cover. I think she found the whole thing very amusing.

Mathilda didn't.

Fortunately, my basically-a-girlfriend was pretty smart, and even though I couldn't outright explain what was up with Maeve, I thought she was _starting_ to figure it out from what I _was_ able to say. Unfortunately, I'd kind of created a bunch of relationship insecurity by refusing to admit she was my girlfriend, so it was easy enough to assume I was looking to better-deal her with the impossibly beautiful new transfer student.

So, Saturday had to happen: big date day, lots of groveling, plenty of confidence-boosting.

And that was how I found myself stealing an hour on Sunday afternoon after a very coupley morning with Mathilda to go interrogate a ghost. A ghost who had immediately jumped to a shocking inference about my intentions. Honestly, it was less worrying than the school thinking I was having an affair with _Maeve_.

"Why don't we get to know each other first?" I hedged to the translucent teen witch hovering over the sinks and giving me what she thought was a sultry look. "You're Myrtle Warren, right? A Ravenclaw?"

She nodded. "And you're Harry Dresden. You're a Gryffindor. All the girls talk about you in here, you know? Talk about how tall and mysterious you are." Floating up to eye level with me, she looked down and fancifully twiddled her feet to show how far they were off the ground.

"I didn't actually know that," I groaned. "What else do they say?"

"They said you don't have a _girlfriend_ , exactly, but maybe you have _two_ girlfriends?" She was confused, and petulantly said, "I don't think you should date that new girl, Harry. She's mean. She froze my toilet once."

"We're definitely agreed on _that_. Those are just rumors that she's spreading. You should tell everyone." I suggested. "But I was curious about _you_."

"Oh?" the ghost managed to make a one-syllable expression last several seconds.

"Do you remember how you died?"

That was apparently the right question, which nobody had ever asked her. Amidst a tirade about some girl named Olive who she hated when alive and became a ghost to torment, she dropped some details about a boy speaking another language in the bathroom, and being paralyzed by yellow eyes that she thought killed her.

"You weren't turned into stone, though?" I asked. That was the first thing that seemed relevant.

"I don't think so? The other ghosts are mean to me because I was poisoned. You can't join any good ghost groups if you were _poisoned_. Not even in _Rome_ , apparently, even with all the assassinations. I think it should count as death by magical beast, since it _was_ acromantula venom. Which is funny, because I've never even _seen_ one of those."

That would definitely jibe with the belief that an acromantula had been responsible. But something didn't add up. Did she see the spider and forget the part where it bit her? Or was she paralyzed and _then_ poisoned? If it was afterward, she wouldn't know. While I thought about that, I asked, "Did you know Tom Riddle?"

"Oh! Tom!" she exhaled, floating up toward the ceiling and again drawing out each word. "He was so cute. He was tall, dark, and handsome like you… well, maybe not quite so tall. I wanted him to notice me so badly. That's why I spent so much time in here. He was in charge of installing the new toilets, you know?"

"I _didn't_ know that," I admitted, thinking. "So you went to school here during the plumbing project? How did that work?"

She shrugged, the effort sending her floating up and backwards. "A lot of transfiguration. The whole school pitched in. The Ravenclaws had to figure out the best places where to put the pipes so they wouldn't break when the castle rearranged itself. And so professors wouldn't have to give up their favorite rooms. This used to be a privy room already, but there's a girls' toilet downstairs that was a storeroom. They didn't even take the lock off the door!"

"I'm familiar with that one," I agreed, it being where Hermione had spent the day before being attacked by a troll. The more important question was, "So Tom would have had access to basically everywhere in the school to route the pipes through? But he kept coming in here…"

"I think he was really proud of the sinks," she suggested, "even though one of them never worked."

The sinks _were_ a pretty nice art deco arrangement of porcelain and copper, and were probably easy to be proud of before half a century of hard use in a haunted bathroom. One, indeed, didn't work, and careful examination revealed a glyph that looked like a snake etched onto the side of one of the copper taps. It wasn't a rune I recognized.

I made a little more small talk with Myrtle before extricating myself to go to the library. I was certain that if I could track down the meaning of that rune, it would give me more of a clue what was going on. I wondered if there might even be a network of them throughout the bathroom project, perhaps treating the entire plumbing system as one artificed array.

Ultimately, I probably would have saved a lot of time if I'd been thinking smaller.

## An Enchanted Evening

"I think the three of you are likely to be at least a half-year ahead when you start runes next year," Percy suggested. We'd put the second years through a test just to see how much they'd been getting from the enchanting seminars, and Hermione, Neville, and Draco had all done quite well after a year and a half of watching us work. "And you two," he said, referencing Seamus and Millie, "will be at least a month ahead." The other two members of my "focus group" had finally started coming to the enchanting club this year, after realizing how much they needed to know to make their own foci.

"That's great!" Hermione enthused, "Only that should make it a lot easier to deal with the rest of my electives to already be so far ahead in runes."

"I doubt you'll have much of a problem anyway, Hermione," Penny suggested. "They adjust the other class times for your third year to account for the new electives, so you definitely shouldn't stress about a couple of extra classes.

"Except that I'm probably taking _five_ extra classes," the girl shrugged. Both Neville and Seamus rolled their eyes, apparently already aware of this plan. Draco simply shook his head, smirking. "What? Professor McGonagall said I could if I really wanted."

"How?" I asked, thinking about the way the class schedules were set up. "I think you can do _three_ if you're okay sitting with different sessions on different days depending on your other classes. But you'd need a time machine or something to take all five."

I caught Hermione's eyes widening and noticed Percy go stone faced. "Time turners," nodded Luna. She and Colin had started sitting in on the enchanting club as well. Ginny hadn't come with them, citing that she was too busy with quidditch. "Mother wasn't supposed to have told me about them, but they study them in the Department of Mysteries. I'm surprised that they would allow a student to have one, given the danger of paradox or just mischief." Of _course_ the British wizards would invent time travel and use it to navigate Hogwarts' labyrinthine class schedule.

"I'm very responsible," huffed Hermione.

"Percy didn't even take all five classes. He took three and did the other two self-paced," I argued.

"I…" Percy started, then lapsed into a pregnant pause as everyone looked at him, even the twins glancing up from what they were tinkering with at the back of the room, finally admitting, "...may have gone Hermione's route in third year. The stress was too much, and I decided it was better to study two subjects on my own time rather than continue to throw off my sleep schedule."

"See," I told her, still floored that the only way you could get in on time travel was to work in the Department of Mysteries or be an excessive overachiever, "you're always a ball of stress during exam times anyway, Hermione. Besides, you can _already_ pass the muggle studies OWL and divination's useless unless you have the Sight or you just want a blow-off class."

"Hey! I was gonna take divination!" insisted Seamus. The twins sniggered and then leaned back from completing whatever they were working on, while the rest of the group just shook our heads at the boy.

"Lavender and Parvati are going to take divination and muggle studies," explained Hermione, "and you told me I should do more things with my roommates, Harry! So I was going to take it to spend more time with them."

"Woah!" I said, not liking being blamed for all of this. "I support you doing stuff to hang out with your roommates, but not to the point you're trying to do an extra two hours of classes, plus homework, on the same amount of time to sleep!"

"Yeah, Granger," Draco inserted himself into the conversation. "You're unbearable when you're freaking out about exams for your current classes. Add time travel and trying to do five more and you'll be completely intolerable."

"Shut up, Draco!" Hermione turned on him. "You're the one who's unbearable! All those attacks from Death Eaters on Harry! And the basilisk roaming the school! You probably know exactly what's going on and are letting people nearly die because you think it's funny!" Before he could get his denials out, she also added, "And that total slag of a sister!"

"She's not my sister!" the Malfoy heir argued. "She's not even…" he trailed off with a look in his eyes that was similar to when I tried to explain who Maeve was. "She's my… half aunt," he belatedly explained the cover story.

"I notice you didn't say she's not a slag, though," Penny uncharacteristically tagged in on Draco. "The way she spends all her time trying to make people think she's sleeping with Harry…"

Percy growled, "Sometimes I wish _my_ girlfriend was less concerned with _Harry's_ love life."

"Why are you so jealous of Harry?" Penny whirled on her boyfriend. "We're just friends!"

"Your father! He knows Harry helped you heal him and I could tell he was impressed," Percy explained, petulantly. I hadn't even known he'd met the parents yet.

"Guys, ixnay on the ealinghay," I tried to interject, hoping that the rest of the kids in the room wouldn't pick up on the illegal magic Penny had done the previous December. I was actually super annoyed that they were treating something that could get me thrown in prison without the operational security it deserved.

"He so wasn't!" Penny argued, ignoring me. "He found out that Harry's on probation and congratulated me on dating an upstanding young man with a bright future! But thanks for assuming I'm going to date someone just because my father likes him, like I'm some chattel to be married off!"

"You muggleborn are so lucky!" Draco inserted himself back into the conversation, perhaps unwisely. "Longbottom and I have to marry who _our_ parents pick for us."

"Speak for yourself, Malfoy," Neville objected. " _My_ parents said they'd only try to make a match for me if I couldn't find someone I liked on my own. Maybe you should stand up to your father about Parkinson if you're so mad about it!"

"My father has a lot of things on his mind," Draco disagreed, "with my aunt to deal with!" I noticed a smirk, which I suspected was the boy realizing he could get around his secrecy oaths by implying he meant Maeve when he was really talking about Bellatrix.

"How did tha' even work?" Seamus chuckled. "She's a fine Irish lass, sure 'nough. Your grandad go wanderin' to see what pretty Irish witches are like right afore he died? Can't blame 'im."

"Like you'll ever know what a pretty Irish witch is like, Finnegan," Millie tagged in when Draco was at a loss for words and the implied insult to his family. "Face it, you're not a catch."

"Look who's talkin', ya bleedin' gargoyle!" the Irish boy yelled at her. And I thought they'd been getting along a lot better. "How much of a dowry will _your_ da' haveta pay to get some pureblood boy to marry ya?"

"Who says I want to marry a _wizard_?" the big girl shrugged, but seemed like the attack had stung.

"You like _girls_?" Colin joined the conversation, having spent the past few minutes watching it like a tennis match. He didn't seem totally scandalized, but it was if the thought had never entered his head before.

"It's okay to like whoever you like, Colin," Luna suggested, simply, to her year mate. Unlike everyone else, she didn't seem particularly upset. "But why is everyone acting like a swarm of nargles is in the room? I don't see any."

"Luna," Penny chided, "I know you believe in these things but you really need to just shut your mouth when you're about to say something strange like that. This is why you're having a hard time making friends!"

"Penny!" I countered. "I've told you time and time again that you're too close-minded about this! She's probably seeing actual faeries. With the way things are going, we'll all be seeing them soon enough!"

"What?" several people asked at once.

"What do you think is going to happen when the school is playing host to the–" my mouth snapped shut before I could finish the thought, since I'd meant to say, "queen of the faeries!" I growled at the oath I hadn't even deliberately signed up for continuing to prevent me from sharing important information with my friends.

But the moment of silence gave me a jolt of perspective, especially since my fractured thought led everyone to spin off into their own private fights. Penny and Percy were having a hushed argument and the second years seemed to be mounting another Gryffindor/Slytherin offensive. Over at their table, the twins had apparently been having a row that had passed the rest of us by. "I'm so sick of you always getting to be Fred!"

"Maybe if you were witty enough to start the conversation!" the other twin who was maybe _not_ George argued.

"It's all Harry's stupid rule anyway!" the one I'd normally consider Fred because he talked first insisted. "We need to figure out how to start conversations more evenly!"

"I'm not pre-planning conversational openers just so Harry will think you're Fred!"

"But I _am_ Fred!" apparently-actually-Fred nearly sobbed.

It was so ridiculous that I started thinking about it logically, and noticed their completed enchanting project whirling angrily. It looked like a sneakoscope, and I remembered telling the twins about the broken one I'd been working on over the summer.

Hoping I wasn't going to have to owe them a huge apology for destroying an unrelated project, I strode over and slapped the spinning wooden top down while shouting, " _Diffindo!_ " and channeling the cutting charm through my hand and into the magical object.

With the snap of splitting wood, it was like cold water hit the room, and everyone suddenly went quiet. The almost-imperceptible bubbling anger I'd been feeling was only detectable by its instant absence.

"Oh!" the-one-who-said-he-was-Fred exclaimed.

"Bugger!" said probably-George. "Well _that_ worked too well."

" _What_ were you trying to make?" I asked, gritting my teeth.

"Portable argument," likely-Fred admitted.

"You gave us the idea," I'll-assume-George wheedled.

"It would be a great prank! If we hadn't gotten affected by it too." admitted admittedly-Fred.

"Too strong, though," said professedly-George. "Back to the drawing board."

Everyone else groaned at getting on the end of the twins' prank, then the rest of the session was mostly about apologies.

As we were leaving, Luna caught me in private and asked, "You and Draco made oaths to a faerie not to talk about her? That seems dangerous."

"Not to–" I managed to get out, then tried, "I didn't mean to–" Even if Luna, of everyone, had worked it out, I still apparently couldn't talk about it to her.

"It's okay," she patted my hand. "Don't hurt yourself trying to break the geas. I'll tell daddy what I know and he'll have some ideas."

Somehow, that didn't make me feel like the world was saved.


	25. Dark Room 11: Hidden Things

## Hidden Things

After the giant argument at the enchanting club, things were a little tense with my friends and everyone kept making excuses about availability, so we wound up skipping a few weeks. But everyone gathered back together before dinner on the last day before spring break. Colin had something to show us.

"I finally got it all working!" the young photographer told us, excitedly, showing off the large, framed photograph. It was a shot we'd taken one night when everyone was there earlier in the year. It was fully animated, and was interesting in that it didn't really repeat exactly the same way each time. It was more like the photograph had captured the essence of everyone's personalities than just being a short video.

"That's great, Colin," I told him as Penny used a sticking charm to hang the photograph on the classroom wall. "You got your mysterious darkroom fully stocked?"

"Oh, no, it _came_ fully stocked," the boy brushed off the question, then admitted, "Figuring out the process took me most of the year, though."

"There was a fully-stocked photography dark room somewhere in the castle?" Percy asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Well…" Colin hedged, then saw he actually had everyone's attention and said, "It's really cool. I can show you?"

I nodded, curious. "After dinner?"

Luna's eyes unfocused and she looked around, explaining, "The gold ribbons want us to go now."

"Alright," I said, though several people scoffed at the girl. "We've got about twenty minutes."

"It's on the seventh floor," Colin said, heading out.

Between having to climb up a few floors and just not believing Luna or caring that much about photography, several people made excuses and just headed to dinner. Ultimately, it was just me, Luna, Colin, Hermione, and Neville.

"This is convenient," I said as we just turned right instead of left at one of the corridors that led to the Gryffindor tower entrance. "I wouldn't think there would be any rooms up here without windows." Not that there was much light up there at the moment, since the sun still set pretty early, even into the spring.

Colin stopped suddenly in the hallway. I'd been past here a few times since it was one of the routes across the seventh floor, good to get to Ravenclaw, the astronomy tower, or Dumbledore's office. A tapestry of a wizard trying to teach trolls to dance made the hallway memorable. "Okay, I have to summon the door," the boy explained, then walked determinedly up and down the hallway three times. A door materialized out of the wall on one side of the hallway.

He pushed the door open to reveal the kind of room I'd seen in movies that had a scene about developing photographs, with all the tables covered in rectangular pans, clotheslines for hanging drying pictures, and all lit by torches behind red glass. A few more photos he was working on were hung on the lines. It looked like the door would seal shut against the exterior lights, and there was even a screen he could pull across just in case someone opened the door while he was working and what looked like a door to a completely light-tight closet for removing the undeveloped film from the roll. It was a pretty professional setup, particularly for a medieval castle.

"Was this a potions lab?" Neville asked, clearly confused.

Hermione picked up on it faster, "Can this room be anything you need?"

Colin nodded. "I wound up asking the elves for a good room. They call it the 'come and go room' and they use it to store extra furniture or whatever."

Hermione brightened as she recalled something, "Hogwarts: a History has a couple of mentions of something called the Room of Requirement! It didn't go into details because I don't think anyone's ever really studied it. This is amazing! Colin! You've found what may be one of the founders' secrets!" Colin blushed over the attention from the older muggleborn.

"A room that no one has ever found, no matter how hard they looked?" I asked her, less happy about the situation. The floor's bathroom was several halls away, so it _was_ likely they'd never run plumbing through these walls, but still. McGonagall had been so sure every room in the castle was mapped…

"Well, yes, but… you mean this could be the Chamber of Secrets!" Hermione's eyes widened.

"I think we better go get Dumbledore," I nodded.

"But I've been in here a lot and haven't seen any signs of monsters…" Colin explained as we left the room and started heading across the floor toward Dumbledore's office.

"It may be unrelated," I told the boy. "Slytherin probably wouldn't put his room this high up unless he was being extra sneaky hiding it right near the other founders' towers. But if there are magically hidden rooms in the castle they missed, they need to know. At the very least, they need to figure out a better way of searching for secrets." That all said, I also planned to come back later and search near the Room of Requirement for more of those snake glyphs I'd seen in Myrtle's bathroom.

As we turned a corner before the headmaster's office, Luna suddenly asked, "Why is that silver?" I followed her pointing finger to the curved mirror that hung at the intersection. I'd gotten so used to seeing them I'd glanced before turning the corner but not even registered that it was more reflective than usual.

" _Finite incantatem_ ," I cast, my hand and concentration focused at the mirror, and it rippled as the transfiguration ended and it returned to simple bronze. "Someone spelled it more reflective…"

"Ah! Students! To what do I owe the pleasure?" Dumbledore asked, spotting us as he stepped past the gargoyle out of his office preceded by Lockhart. "Gilderoy and I just had a meeting about his spring lesson plan, and I was on my way to dinner."

"Two things," I started as we moved into step with the two professors down the hallway, "Someone made your mirrors more reflective, and–"

I noticed Luna was turning suddenly and looking back toward the other branch of the corridor from we'd just turned off of, toward one of the corner staircases. "The gold ribbons…" she muttered.

I held a hand to keep everyone else silent and _listened_ , hearing the sound of something large rasping against stone. I chanced a look at the repaired mirror and saw a giant shadow down the hallway. I groaned. The tiny seer was seeing the fortune wards! "Basilisk incoming!"

The obvious thing to do would have been to run ten feet back up the hallway and into Dumbledore's office, but the kids panicked and started running in the direction we were already moving, toward one of the central staircases. Admittedly, it _was_ away from the basilisk. Lockhart was quickly outpacing them in his own haste to escape.

A roaring hiss echoed down the corridor as the basilisk picked up speed. "Don't look at it!" Hermione shouted, likely unnecessarily, expositing even as we fled, student robes flapping around coltish legs trying to make haste on worn stone.

Lockhart stumbled into a small classroom and shrieked in fear, slamming the door before anyone else could get in. While the guy had turned out to be a competent duelist and had been improving as a teacher, I'd never shed the idea that his books were fiction. At the very least, he'd never even written about facing anything this big and unfairly deadly. Basilisks petrified with a glance, had impossibly potent venom, and were so spell resistant that even Dumbledore would have trouble landing anything.

Of course, the headmaster had adapted to that and was transfiguring the stones behind us into bollards as we ran. Fingers of granite reached from the floor and walls to obstruct pursuers. "Did you ever redirect the fortune wards?" I asked him, worried that if the death we were trying to escape was still dumping on Lockhart, his small classroom wouldn't be much protection.

"Yes," he answered simply, his urge to elaborate cancelled out by being over a century old and trying to keep up with a bunch of teenagers running down a dimly-lit, smooth-floored hallway. The thunderous sound of the giant snake smashing through his obstructions behind us meant Lockhart must be safer than us. "Fawkes!" he gasped, and a moment later the phoenix appeared in a flash of golden fire, still young-looking after his burning day. "Save the children!" Dumbledore ordered the bird, who was probably still too small to manage multiple people in one teleportation.

The crimson bird streaked forward and grabbed Luna's robes, the blond seer having started to fall behind her longer-legged peers, and both disappeared in another flash of fire. "The stairs are blocked!" shouted Neville, who was finally starting to growth spurt into some height and had, thus, wound up leading the pack while I hung back with Dumbledore. We were soon up to where we could see as well, the stairs down somehow packed with so much detritus that even an exploding charm from Dumbledore wouldn't clear a path.

"This was planned!" I insisted, noticing the silver mirror above the corridor junction, as the kids turned right back into a hallway that led toward Gryffindor tower. No wonder the fortune wards had started directing Luna so far ahead of the event. Whoever was controlling the basilisk had expected to trap the headmaster. "It's after you!" I warned him.

Fawkes flamed back in and managed to use his currently-small wingspan to navigate the relatively narrow hallway and swoop onto Colin's back. Despite being overall more athletic than Hermione and Neville, the boy was over a year younger and trying to run with his heavy camera clutched to his chest. The two disappeared.

Dumbledore had continued throwing up transfiguration barriers behind us, and had started growing them into pursuer-facing spikes rather than simple posts, but it didn't seem to be having much effect. I really didn't want to fight a giant snake that was functionally immune to magic _and_ able to shrug off running into granite spikes while barely slowing. The headmaster _was_ slowing, all the magic while trying to sprint was taking it out of him.

I felt helpless to assist. Combat transfigurations were one of the things I was most limited at doing without a wand, and the blowing-stuff-up I excelled at would splash right off the thing even if I could look at it to aim without being petrified. I half considered just picking the headmaster up to run with him, but I wasn't exactly strong enough to piggyback a full-grown adult any faster than he was already going.

The winding corridor to Gryffindor tower was long and absent any obvious hiding spaces, more an alleyway between the various other structures on this level of the castle (likely a lot of which was the hidden Room of Requirement). Not that the basilisk wouldn't be able to smash into a classroom if it really wanted to. It was probably only the confined spiral staircase up to the astronomy tower that had kept it from putting its full mass and momentum against the door when we'd been trapped earlier in the year. Fawkes had managed to grab Hermione, then Neville, before we reached the end, but the basilisk was basically right on top of us.

One stray glance was all it took.

Whoever had planned this had gone ahead and transfigured _all_ the mirrors on the seventh floor. I noticed Dumbledore's gaze flick up as we turned the last corner and then he simply _stopped_. Or, rather, his momentum and now-paralyzed form sent him clattering into the closest wall, but somehow his feet had been in such a position that he just lay against the stone rather than falling over. I heard the basilisk slow, hissing in what seemed like satisfaction.

"No!" I yelled, skidding to a stop. I averted my eyes from the monster or the mirror, focusing on the old man, and at least confirming that he was simply paralyzed, not turned to stone. At that moment, Fawkes reappeared, and I ordered him. "Not me! Get the headmaster somewhere safe!"

With an angry trill, the headmaster's familiar landed and took himself and the body away in a burst of flame. Not wasting any more time, I rushed the final few feet out onto the landing of the stairway down from Gryffindor tower and yelled the password at the portrait of the Fat Lady, "Lion's Mane! Then run! There's a basilisk!" I didn't know whether the portraits could be petrified, but better safe than sorry.

The portrait leaned open and I hoped the guardian imago had taken my advice as I pulled it closed behind me. I was really counting on the combination of the extra protections on a student dorm and the door's awkward position over the stairwell to keep the monster from bursting in after me.

From outside, I could barely hear the grinding of scales studded with the grit of dozens of pulverized stone barricades, and two sets of echoing hisses, as if a conversation was happening. And then, the snake wandered off. "Another point to you, Dresden," a high-pitched man's voice told me from outside the door. It was strangely familiar, but different than the wraith of Voldemort from the back of Quirrell's head. "You've denied me the old man's blood. But he's no longer here to protect _you_ …

"Enjoy your holiday, Harry Dresden. There's nowhere you'll be safe afterward."

The faint, fading, gritty slithering of the basilisk was my only clue that they'd decided to go, for now. And, why not? They had at least until the mandrakes matured to finish their scheme.

I still didn't even know what it was.

## Courtroom Drama

Fawkes had transported the kids to their individual rooms, and Hermione, Neville, and Colin had found me while I waited in the common room for the snake and its unknown master to leave. Once I sent a patronus to McGonagall, she had found the headmaster in his office, his incapacitation giving her access, the phoenix sadly guarding the old man's paralyzed form. She had apparently elected to have Madam Pomfrey check him there rather than risk an attack on him in the infirmary.

If the professors made a plan, they hadn't included me further. I'd missed dinner, and was on the train back to London in the morning for spring break. McGonagall had asked me to keep the headmaster's indisposition quiet, but the rumors of what had happened had spread quickly up and down the train, and my refusal to answer about why the headmaster wasn't at breakfast was seen as answer enough.

I probably should have just flooed directly back to Remus' house, rather than doing it from the fireplace at King's Cross.

As I stepped out of the fire with no luggage and just two weeks' worth of clothes in my bag of holding, I wound up interrupting Remus in a makeout session on the couch, the hair of the girl underneath him a more lush pink than her usual. "Good job, team," I told Tonks.

"Where did the time go?" Remus said, embarrassed, obviously not expecting me back yet.

"Wotcher, Harry!" Tonks grinned, unembarrassed about being caught, clothing still on but extremely manhandled.

"We've got trouble," I told them as Remus hastily adjusted his own clothing back into position. "The headmaster got paralyzed by the basilisk last night. Whoever's controlling it was going after him, and now there's nothing in between him and the school. Or me. Plus…"

"...No Chief Warlock at the Wizengamot on Friday," Remus finished for me. Spiking Umbridge's anti-werewolf legislation suddenly seemed like a much less important problem, but it would be a lot harder without Dumbledore orchestrating it from his position of authority over the court.

That was like a bucket of cold water on Tonks' libido that my arrival hadn't been. "I'll check with Moody," she said, professionalism snapping into place and heading for the fireplace. After a hasty conversation, she pulled her head out of the fading green flames and explained, "He says the Order's scrambling, but we'll just have to proceed as planned at the Wizengamot. Seems like nobody was prepared for Dumbledore to be incapacitated?"

"His penchant for micromanagement was another reason I wasn't deeply invested this last decade," Remus admitted.

Ultimately, after a week of furious planning among the members of the Old Crowd who _were_ invested in Dumbledore's political agenda, I was escorted to the Ministry by Moody. It just made more sense, in case anyone that recognized Remus knew about his secret. We flooed in Friday morning bright and early, the Ministry, like most bureaucracies, one of the few magical institutions that cared about the clock. The old auror was right behind me out of the floo, and staggered into my back as he exited, mis-planting his prosthetic leg. "Sorry about that Dresden," he grumbled, pushing against me to stand back up, "Constant vigilance."

"No worries," I told him, re-situating my robes and belt where he'd shoved me.

The atrium was much busier than it had been when I'd visited over the winter, robed individuals all entering from numerous fireplaces, swarming past the incredibly tacky giant golden statue of a wizard lording it over the other magic races, and nearly overwhelming the intake clerks. At least most of the crowd was regulars and had badges, but I had to stop at the wand scanning station. This time, I'd brought a "wand" to make it easier.

"Phoenix feather core and… unicorn horn!?" the clerk's eyes widened, checking the output of his scan.

"I made it myself," I smiled. It wasn't _really_ a wand, but had a much more similar form factor than my rod or staff, both of which I'd reluctantly left at home. If I needed them in the Ministry, we were in even bigger trouble (which, I had argued and lost, was _exactly_ why I should bring them).

"I've linked it to your records, Mr. Dresden," the man agreed, passing it back with some reverence. If Dawlish kept banging the drum that I was a dark wizard, being on record as having a unicorn horn wand should make it harder to convince anyone.

I took my temporary badge and Moody walked me to an elevator that took us down a level to the Department of Mysteries, and then for some reason we had to take stairs down another level and walk through a labyrinthine passageway to get to the courtroom used for Wizengamot sessions. Maybe it was an ancient security measure to keep prisoners from escaping?

The room itself was about what you'd expect this deep in a dungeon: a large, rough-hewn cavern of dark stone lit by torchlight. It was almost certainly the most secure chamber of this size in the country, but the bleakness of the surroundings probably had a lot to do with why the laws in Britain were so backwards and mean-spirited.

It was already mostly full of what I assumed were the voting members, and Moody directed me over to benches near the podium at the front of the room with a few other witnesses. Among the Wizengamot members in the amphitheater seating, I recognized a few friends of Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, and, unfortunately, the senior Nott (who was almost certainly the Death Eater who kept trying to capture me). Moody withdrew to the side of the room, where other aurors were spaced out in guard positions. Dawlish scowled at me when I noticed him.

Shortly before the appointed 9 AM start time, the court quieted down as a procession entered, with Umbridge second (in lurid pink formal robes). I assumed that meant the portly little gray-haired man in front wearing pinstriped black and green robes was the Minister, Cornelius Fudge. I recalled I'd seen him at the Malfoy New Years' party, gossiping about Maeve's cover story. He took a place at the head of the podium above me, and the others filled the ministry's box of seats.

"Albus is currently incapacitated," Fudge explained, his voice carrying through the chamber even without obvious magic, since it wasn't _that_ big and the acoustics were designed when architects didn't have speakers so took that kind of thing seriously. He gestured to an old man I didn't recognize sitting in a similarly prominent seat across the box, "So Tiberius will be sitting as Chief Warlock today. We all wish Albus a speedy recovery." Only a few people had seemed surprised at Dumbledore being missing even though it hadn't made the newspaper yet, the rumor mill obviously working as fast in the Ministry as at Hogwarts.

There was over an hour of boring business and minor votes that I couldn't have remembered even if someone had asked me an hour later, when they finally started calling witnesses for Umbridge's proposed law. A few people went before me, mostly citing statistics. Honestly, it turned out there weren't _that many_ werewolves in the country, and it sounded like most of them were minor talents that I guessed would never have the sheer personal magic to fuel the curse into another Greyback.

Finally, in her simpering voice, Umbridge explained my presence to the courtroom. "Harry Dresden is a sixth-year at Hogwarts. He was attacked by Fenrir Greyback in two separate attempts on his life this year, and, in the second, Greyback was put down. Mr. Dresden?"

"Thank you, Madam Senior Undersecretary," I told her. Addressing the court from my seat in the witness stand, I summarized, "Greyback was after me to 'send a message.' In his second attack, he was with two men dressed as Death Eaters who had attacked me separately at school. I understand Greyback was also a servant of You-Know-Who in the war." I'd been carefully coached, and we figured out a way of laying out some serious implications without dragging Remus into the story. I was reticent about not just saying "Voldemort," but most of the British were really touchy about it.

"Why are former servants of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named after you?" one of Dumbledore's friends, Doge, piped up, as rehearsed.

"I'm not totally sure, sir. My former mentor, Justin DuMorne, died when a dark ritual he was trying to cast on me went wrong, and I think he may have secretly been an ally of You-Know-Who," Dawlish was red-faced against the wall, clearly about to scream at me, but he looked at Umbridge and clenched his mouth shut so hard I thought he was going to break his jaw. "They seem to want my blood or Headmaster Dumbledore's blood for some ritual related to being their dark lord's enemy."

I glanced at Nott, who seemed a little annoyed at the plot being laid out in front of the whole Wizengamot. He caught me watching and went stone-faced, with a slight sneer. Seated near him, Malfoy just seemed amused by the entire thing. "We may be slightly off topic, though we appreciate the context," Fudge interjected. "Mr. Dresden, what is your input on the proposed law?"

I nodded to the Minister, and explained, "I did a lot of research on werewolves after Greyback started hunting me. It's not really a disease, but a self-perpetuating curse. If you let it, it gradually eats away at your magic and soul, making you a terrifying physical combatant, but unable to really cast spells anymore. Even not on the full moon, Greyback was so wrapped in dark magic that spells and physical attacks just washed off of him like off of a troll. The only way we were able to stop him, was permanently."

"How _did_ you stop him?" Malfoy asked.

I hadn't really been planning to give that up, but I didn't see the harm in it and admitted, "Inherited silver. Normal silver doesn't do much, but family heirlooms build up a resonance that can bypass the protections from the curse."

There was quite a murmuring, and Fudge instructed someone quietly, "Tell Mysteries to get on confirming that." He looked back up and said, "That may be very useful. Do you have more, Mr. Dresden?"

I nodded. This was the tricky part. "Do you know why many dark wizards can't cast a patronus?" I asked the auditorium, mostly rhetorically because even Remus hadn't seemed to understand. "It's not just because they have trouble having a happy memory. As part of some of my other research at school, we've learned that the patronus is soul magic. Using magic to kill, torture, and dominate isn't just unforgivable, it actually damages your spirit. The same as the werewolf curse does. _Expecto Patronum!_ "

The audience gasped at my bit of theater as Mouse, my giant silver dog patronus, strode around the courtroom floor giving everyone a doggy grin, boosting spirits from the ambient energy of the spell.

"I personally support Senior Undersecretary Umbridge's legislation because I think it's a good first step to identifying the _other_ monsters among us." I kept my voice raised so I wouldn't get shouted down while I stuck in the knife. "If we can detect and punish werewolves who have let their curse destroy their souls... it's an easy next step to identify dark wizards that have done the same thing."

As planned, the murmuring started. The members of the Light faction had big smiles at the idea, while there were several people near Nott and Malfoy that I assumed were members of the Dark that suddenly _hated_ the idea. I wondered how many of _them_ could cast a patronus.

It didn't take long after that for the legislation to bog down and start to unravel, since the Light started making very reasonable requests to add research into soul magic into the law for later use in punishing dark magic, and the Dark faction was clearly withdrawing their support of a law that they originally thought would just put the screws to werewolves now that it would set a bad precedent for them as well.

I caught Umbridge giving me the side-eye, and I figured she'd probably figured out that I'd tanked her law while seeming to support it. Ah, well, at least she probably couldn't _prove_ anything. Malfoy was giving me a look, as well, that made me believe he'd have some things to say to me eventually about coming down so fully on the side of the Light.

"We clearly have a lot of committee work still to do before further considering this law," Fudge finally told the crowd. "Let's table it and move on. New business?"

Nott stood and said, "We need to know more about the Chief Warlock's 'incapacitation.' The rumor is that he was petrified by Slytherin's Monster, which has already struck against multiple students and the librarian. My _son_ is at Hogwarts. If even their headmaster isn't safe there, the school should be closed until this threat can be located and eliminated!"

As the arguing started, I wondered why Voldemort's servant _wanted_ the school scoured for the basilisk. But what if he didn't? What if he just wanted the school closed down? That would give them potentially free access to Hogwarts while Dumbledore couldn't monitor the wards.

And only McGonagall, as acting headmistress, stood between them and whatever they had planned…

## Hats Off

In hindsight, the smartest thing to do would have been to go back to Remus' and hide where Voldemort couldn't get anywhere near me. The second smartest thing would have been to at least go back and get my foci. But in the moment, I really felt like I only had a limited time advantage having figured out the plot, and I needed to hurry. It didn't help that Mathilda and several of my other friends were still at school, using the break to study.

So I went right through the floo from the Ministry to Hogsmeade with just what I had on my back. I'd at least taken a moment to warn Moody on my way out, though I didn't get the impression he was taking my wild guess completely seriously and would probably waste time going to committee with Dumbledore's crew.

Trying to capitalize on my attempt to steal a march on the Death Eaters, I slipped as quickly as possible out of the inn and down the secret tunnel in the candy shop, hoping that I was less memorable without my staff. A few minutes' crabwalk down the passage and I let myself out of the statue of the one-eyed witch right into the middle of the castle.

Moody was right, though. They _really_ needed to close up all these tunnels out of and into the school.

I wasn't alone. Two redheads were lounging against the walls near the secret passage. "Why Mr. Dresden, fancy meeting you here." The first twin said. Normally I'd assume it was Fred, but since I was trying to be more equitable after their argument, I decided he was George.

"Indeed, indeed. Not often you see students trying to sneak _into_ the castle on their holidays," Fred observed.

"Aren't you both supposed to be home as well? I know Percy and Ginny were on the train," I asked.

"Never," George shook his head.

"We always stay for the spring hols," Fred explained.

"Fewer people in the way of research, development, exploration, and setup," George shrugged.

"Ron and his friends are here too. To _study_." Fred added.

"Hermione really is too good of an influence on those boys," George grumbled.

"Anyway, that's us. So why _you_?" Fred grilled.

"Tell me where McGonagall is right now, and I'll explain on the way," I said.

"Probably on her way back to the head's office after lunch," George allowed, after a brief, quiet conference.

"She moved in there for the time being," Fred added.

"Let's go, then," I told them, and we started heading up to the seventh floor. "Did I tell you about Nott?" I asked them. They shook their heads and I explained, "I'm pretty sure he's the skinny Death Eater that keeps attacking me. He just got the Wizengamot to shut down the school, pretending he was upset about Dumbledore getting attacked. I think he's trying to clear the place out so Voldemort can get in."

"The wards!" Fred realized faster than George.

I nodded. "We have to warn McGonagall that they're going to try to get her out of the way too, specifically."

The seventh floor was basically as good as new when we got up there, the evidence of Dumbledore's smashed obstacles already de-transfigured and repaired, though some of the stones looked smoother and cleaner than the others if you knew what to look for. We'd taken the stairs up to Gryffindor and cut over, retracing the path of the chase in reverse. So it was surprising to see another element of it repeated: Lockhart walking up out of the central stairway (also clear of rubble) with McGonagall.

"That _does_ seem like a good idea, Gilderoy," she was telling him. "I don't see any problems with any of the lesson ideas you've proposed so far."

I glanced up and saw that the mirrors were still in their "safe" configuration of bronze this time, at least, but I still felt like once was coincidence, but twice was enemy action. Why was Lockhart so conveniently around to put first Dumbledore and now McGonagall in danger? Surreptitiously shaking my shield bracelet out so the twins would hear it jingle, I raised my voice down the corridor, "Hope we're not interrupting?"

"Hoss!" McGonagall stopped and turned, amused to see me here, "You're supposed to be away for the holidays." She then noticed my bracelet was free, and raised an eyebrow. "This is important?"

"Mr. _Nott_ ," I stressed the name, pretty sure that Dumbledore had clued her in on my suspicions, or at least that she knew he was likely a Death Eater, "convinced the Wizengamot to shut down the school. I'm worried that there might be an ulterior motive." I shot a glance at Lockhart, deliberately _not_ meeting his eyes as had become my habit, but definitely saw a flicker of annoyance, his face losing the unconcerned air he usually put on. I also saw a wand slipping into his hand out of his sleeve, and I yelled, "Professor! Down!"

Give the aging witch her due, she'd been in a war. She saw where I was looking and didn't just drop, but shifted into her cat form and started racing toward me. Lockhart's hissed, " _Stupefy!_ " sent a bolt of red light careening through where she'd have been impossible to miss at that range if she was still human-sized.

" _Protego!_ " I said, raising my shield to protect me and the twins as the animagus covered the distance. For their part, the two had their wands out and were launching their specialty "prank" jinxes back down the hallway. They weren't as immediately fight-ending as a stunner, but might as well be if you didn't know the counter. And the two were _fast_.

Lockhart was faster, dodging several and doing some kind of point-defense shield to deflect those that would have landed. It at least caught his attention enough that his return fire was directed at us and splashed off my shield rather than targeting McGonagall. As soon as she crossed the distance, I started falling back around the corner, shield still raised.

"Gilderoy was _cleared_ ," she complained, returning to human form around the corner.

He _had_ been. Dumbledore had been _certain_ of it. And maybe he _was_ clear, originally. I realized something, details crystallizing in my mind. "Summon his hat," I whispered to her.

Wand out, she gave me a look but shrugged and incanted, " _Accio Gilderoy's Hat!_ " He grunted in surprise from around the corner. Nobody expects them to steal your hat in a fight. The baby blue pointed hat sailed around the corner into McGonagall's hand.

I stood on my tip toes and poked my head around the corner to get a glimpse, then jerked back as his spell smashed into the corner, at head level for anyone that wasn't incredibly tall. "I assume he didn't always wear a silver circlet with a big blue stone under the hat?" I asked. I was pretty sure he didn't, because while he usually wore a hat in the first semester, he'd _always_ worn one since the holidays.

Wait, not since the holidays: since Pince was paralyzed. What I'd assumed was a red line on her forehead from the hat could just as easily have been due to constantly wearing the bit of jewelry I'd just seen around Lockhart's head.

"I think Pince was wearing it and he must have wound up with it. It's probably mind controlling him," I explained as the four of us continued retreating down the hallway. "Fred. George. Go warn people while we hold him off," I suggested. They grunted in agreement, and dashed off.

"I need to get to the headmaster's office," McGonagall told me. "Unlike Albus, I can't control the wards from just anywhere, much less notify the aurors without the floo."

"Too risky," I disagreed with her. With Voldemort somehow controlling an already-accomplished duelist like Lockhart, I didn't expect even McGonagall to accomplish much, and my offensive options were limited. I thought about trying the libertas on him, but it seemed like a big risk at the moment, since he could start firing killing curses. And the basilisk probably wouldn't be in play until it got dark, which gave us a few hours. "The other professors?"

"Most are gone for the holiday. No one left is a skilled duelist."

"Bunker in Gryffindor and send patronuses?" I suggested. We were almost there anyway, retreating backwards down the long hallway assuming that Lockhart was pacing us. Before McGonagall could answer, I heard a faint muttering from the stairway landing that sounded like, "Hide and stop Minerva if she comes this way." I glanced that way and saw a slight flicker of motion, so I yelled, "Down! _Protego!_ "

I got my shield up before the vial of erumpent potion hit the wall above us, debris clattering off from the smashed stone. It was _loud_ , and my hearing was momentarily shot. Across the way, the disillusionment veil slipped off of Professor Belby, his crazy potion-spiked hair wilder than normal, or maybe it was just the glassy, confused look in his eyes. He was reaching for more potions, and also had his wand in hand. "Damocles? What are you doing?" I thought McGonagall yelled at him, though I was only guessing from context due to the ringing in my ears. She seemed totally discombobulated by the surprise assault. At least I didn't see the twins nearby, so he must have ignored them as they ran past.

"Imperius!" I shouted, needing her war reflexes to kick back in. With Belby guarding the path to the stairs and Gryffindor tower, we stood back from our defensive crouch and dashed around the corner to the right before he could take another shot. I didn't know what else he had in his potions array, and Lockhart was probably right behind.

To McGonagall's great confusion, rather than making a break for Ravenclaw, I quickly juked up and down the hallway three times, thinking we needed a place to hide. I figured Lockhart might try to double back and catch us in the hallway, and hoped he didn't know about the Room of Requirement. I could tell my hearing was coming back because she gasped and dove after me into the doorway that appeared.

We had a Voldemort-possessed self-avowed professional monster hunter and an imperiused bomber after us, true. The most combat-effective backup in immediate range was probably either of said mind-controlled teachers, sure. But at least we had… a giant warehouse room full of mazelike stacks of furniture, broken objects, and other assorted detritus?

As the door started to rattle behind us, we sprinted off into the maze to hide.

## Stack Exchange

"Stars and stones, what is this place?" McGonagall marveled, a little louder than was probably safe since our hearing still hadn't gotten back to full capacity after having magical nitroglycerine thrown at us. We were wending our way deeper into the stacks of discarded items that were what the castle gave us when I asked for a place to hide.

"Room of Requirement," I told her, hopefully quietly enough that our pursuers wouldn't be able to find us by talking. "Gives you whatever room you need, apparently. Colin found it looking for a darkroom to develop his photos."

"That's a shawl I lost when I was a sixth year!" she gasped, plucking said article of clothing off of a rack full of fashions from the 1940s. She looked more closely at everything around and explained, "This must be where the elves put unclaimed items. Albus never did get a straight answer from them about whether there was a 'lost and found' procedure. Some of this looks centuries old! The valuables may have reverted to Hogwarts ownership. If we could sell some for funding…"

"We can fundraise after we keep Voldemort from taking over the school, Professor," I told her. I was, of course, glancing around myself, mostly looking for anything that looked like a proper battle focus. I'd been really kicking myself for not stopping by for my staff and blasting rod, but I guessed I'd narrowly saved McGonagall as it was, so maybe it worked out. I half wondered if the school's fortune wards could have reached all the way down to London to affect my choices to defend her.

I decided to schedule time to have an internal philosophy debate later about fate and fortune magic versus free will. Right now, we needed to have a plan.

Unfortunately, the time to plan was severely limited by monologuing. Voldemort-as-portrayed-by-Gilderoy-Lockhart shouted across the room, "So you've somehow found the Room of Hidden Things? And thought that it would be unknown to _me_?" He sounded petulant, maybe like he thought _he_ was the only one that knew about the place.

"I found out about it from a first year, man," I shouted, covering my mouth and trying to get my voice to reflect off of a different towering heap of objects. "How long did it take _you_ to find it?"

" _Bombarda!_ " he shouted, knocking over a mound of lost objects in the direction I'd pitched my voice. "I begin to see why you have earned a place as Voldemort's enemy, Dresden. Your mouth would put you against anyone." That was interesting. He was almost talking like he didn't have the memories of the shade I'd tangled with the previous year.

"Hoss, we don't taunt You-Know-Who into a mad rage. It never works out well," McGonagall scolded me as we tried to quietly reposition through the room. Even though he'd missed, toppling the trash had probably cost us some pathways through.

"But _is_ that him?" I asked her quietly, stepping over a fallen broom that was so old it was unclear whether it was meant to fly or sweep. "He's talking like he's not actually the real one. And you would have been notified by the wards if the actual shade somehow possessed him. Plus, if I'm right about that tiara, he's been possessed since Pince got attacked."

"It's a diadem, I think," she corrected absently, then had a thought. "I'd have to consult with Filius, but perhaps Ravenclaw's lost diadem. It was said to expand the mind. If You-Know-Who somehow found and corrupted it…"

"Then he could have it basically running a copy of his mind to control people remotely. He's gone full Doctor Doom with his Doombots running around," I complained.

"I'm not familiar with that individual," she told me, clearly quashing the urge to have me clarify whether it was a real muggle doctor she didn't know about or one of my media obsessions. Instead, she started transfiguring junk into vicious-looking wildcats and sending them to stalk through the stacks.

"Good idea," I told her. "If you transform, you can slip in with them and get behind him. I'll draw his fire and you hex him in the back?"

"I can't let you risk yourself like that, Hoss," she tried to tell me, but it was too late. I was already around a stack from her, looking for a weapon. I still hadn't found anything obviously magical that looked like something I could use. I compromised on an old mop handle that the head had rotted off of. If I was lucky, they'd think I had a staff, and I could at least hit someone with it if I could get close enough. Moody had been insistent over the last few months of defense tutoring that if I was going to carry a staff and rod that I should be at least minimally competent at hitting people with them.

"So you're just a copy of the real Voldemort, huh?" I shouted, once I thought I was clear of the professor's area, carefully picking my way around a corridor of stacked desks that didn't look especially safe. "How does that work? You're just a more complicated imperius programmed into Ravenclaw's diadem?"

"Far more than a copy, Dresden!" the copy in question yelled back, sounding closer than I'd expected. "And the diadem is merely a trophy of my greatness. Useful, but hardly essential!" I was beginning to really appreciate Voldemort's tendency to monologue, even in Doombot form. If years of reading comics taught me anything, it was that you learn so much from bad guys that want to prove how much smarter they are than you. Maybe I could convince him to put me in an easily-escapable death trap if he got the upper hand. "Cats!?" I heard him yell, then fire off a couple of spells.

I repositioned a little further away from where he was coming from, stepping over a pile of lost homework so old the writing was starting to fade off the parchment. "If so, you should have gone with something a little more modern. Diadems don't exactly _blend_ , even back in the forties when you're from."

"And _you_ have no sense of tradition, boy!" he snarled, both annoyed at me and, from the yowls, still engaged in fighting off McGonagall's transfigured cats. "I'm surprised you even use an actual staff and rod. Wouldn't it _blend_ better to use, I don't know, some muggle sporting equipment for the staff? Perhaps a drumstick for the rod? You could tell the muggles you're so keen on that you were in the Beatles."

"A little out of date, but it's interesting that you kept up with muggle entertainment into the 60s. Personally, I would have figured you for a Stones guy, though." I wondered about that, and suggested, "How do you feel about metal? Queensryche or Metallica seem like they'd be your speed. There are probably some good British ones, too, if you don't want to go American." I made a guess, "But they'd be after your time, right?"

"It is never after my time!" the madman insisted, getting too close. I decided to shut up for a minute while I slipped gingerly through a collection of scuffed-up bedpans. A couple more cats slunk over the piles in his general direction. The theory that had popped into my head was that Dumbledore would have been looking for objects like the diadem being slipped into the school. The thing _had_ to reek of dark magic. But what if it had already _been_ here?

Feeling like I'd opened some space, I finally asked, "Was the diadem just sitting in this room since you bombed your job interview in the 70s? Did poor Madam Pince just find it on her own, or did you get to her at her library convention?"

"You're too sharp, Dresden. I'd have had to do away with you eventually, even were you not devoted to being an aggravation. To do you the favor of satisfying your curiosity, she was imperiused over the summer and given specific instructions to acquire a more permanent means of control." The voice sounded smug and then suddenly Voldelockhart appeared at the end of the row I'd been walking down, which was mostly cabinets with miscellaneous junk like old busts stacked on top of them. "You also talk too much," he gave me a mean smile, oddly terrifying in the dandy wizard's face that was always so debonair. With the snap in the closeness of the sound, I realized he'd been using magic to project his voice and lull me into a false sense of security.

When the monologuing villain was accusing _me_ of talking too much, I might have a problem. Nonetheless, I couldn't resist blowing him a raspberry as I dove behind a cabinet with an old wig lying atop it and an acid-scarred set of doors, barely dodging his barrage of spells. The piece of furniture practically exploded, a cage with a small, strange skeleton flying loose. _Any time now, professor_ , I thought to myself, wondering if I could get to an old marble bust to throw it at him. "Where's Belby?" I asked, over the din.

"Hunting down the Weasley twins," he said. "Like I need him to deal with you." I caught a flicker of one of the cats he'd begun ignoring transforming behind him into a black-clad Scottish witch and lining up her shot, only for him to casually flick a, " _Confrigo!_ " behind him, McGonagall having to fling herself backwards to avoid the curse that smashed the floor ahead of her. "Either of you. You didn't think I'd figure out your trick with the cats, Minerva?" he sneered.

He turned to focus on the assistant headmistress, sparing me just enough mind to easily blast my thrown objects out of the air, turning the poor ancient wizard's marble head into so much powder. It at least kept him from going all out on McGonagall, who was quickly losing the duel regardless, but hadn't had to handle any Unforgivables.

Finally, with a dismissive, " _Flipendo_ ," he caught her and sent her flying into a large cabinet at the end of the row, the doors clattering shut as she hit the back wall of the piece of furniture. " _Bombarda!_ " he called, blowing up the base of the stack and causing it to topple tons of lost objects onto what might well be the professor's coffin. The fortune wards might not be able to do much if she slowly starved to death, pinned beneath so much furniture.

I hadn't realized I'd stepped free of my limited cover to get a better look until a negligently-cast stunner caught me full in the face and I blacked out.


	26. Dark Room 12: Death Traps

## Death Traps

When I came to, I couldn't move. Thick ropes bound me to some kind of stone, the irregular surfaces pressing into my back making me believe it was a statue. It was cold and damp, with minimal light leaking through my eyelids, a rough, chill stone floor beneath me where I sat on the ground. It felt like my legs were also tied together, but not anchored to anything. A smell of wood fire and potion brewing covered the general mildewed air.

"I know you're awake, Dresden," Voldelockhart's voice chided. "I revivified you." I opened my eyes, since the game was up, and saw him a few paces away, still in the same blue outfit, hat still missing. He was lit primarily by the firelight coming from beneath an immense cauldron. Macnair was tending the oversized potion vessel, and the fact that he hadn't bothered with his Death Eater regalia made me believe they didn't intend for me to survive to provide any further evidence. He'd fashioned a new axe, leaned haphazardly against nearby trunks, likely of potion supplies, a high-backed chair, of all things, facing away from me behind it.

Due to the stillness of the air, lack of stars, and flickers of dim light on other structures, I got the sense that I was in some kind of vast underground room. As my eyes further adjusted, I could pick out a low-lying greenish light being emitted by rows of snake statues—no, snake-carved columns—likely similar to the one I was bound to. Focusing beyond the nearby firelight, I could make out a large, poorly-carved relief of a wizard with an almost-oversized face across the central wall to my left, obviously the focal point of the room.

"Hell's bells, there _is_ a chamber of secrets," I realized.

"Do you like it?" Voldelockhart asked, looking around with pride. "I made it myself. It took most of the summer, before my seventh year, but I needed room for my creation to grow, and it seemed a fitting tribute to old Salazar. It was just a small cave system, when I found it, that sculpture all there was for decoration."

"You hatched your _own_ Slytherin's monster," I guessed. "It wasn't big enough to actually kill anyone when you were in school, so you had to use the acromantula venom."

He nodded, "Old Dumbledore never could figure it out. Still looking for a new spell. That was most of the point, really. Build the myth of Salazar, so my heirship to Slytherin would be more meaningful, and divert suspicion at the same time. And big, dumb Hagrid to take the fall at the end."

"But Myrtle Warren forced you to speed up your timetable," I suggested.

There was a grimace, there. "I didn't realize when that girl's useful infatuation made her dangerously persistent. If she'd gone to Dumbledore with what she knew, it could have all fallen apart. I spent so much time researching ways to banish ghosts when it turned out she hadn't passed on… and then the stupid girl gave up no useful information for 50 years. I assume she finally talked to you?"

"She just needed someone to be nice to her," I tried to shrug, stopped by the ropes. "So why let this place sit for half a century and try to take it back over now?"

"Here isss where I ssshall continue the tale," a voice that was much more distinctively Voldemort's hissed from the shadowed chair. "It'sss ssso ssstrange, being in two placesss at oncsse. After you interfered with my acquisssition of the ssstone a year ago, my ssservants were at leassst ready with my backup plan. But then I wasss 'on the clock' to finisssh thisss ritual."

"The stone was a fake, by the way," I told him. "All I did was keep you from killing a bunch of kids for nothing." That got a hissed snort of annoyance. "Where is old Nott, by the way?"

Macnair started, apparently not having realized I knew who his partner was. Voldemort explained, "Running interferencsse. _Sssomeone_ underssstimated the difficult of capturing the Weasssley twinsss." Voldelockhart looked both abashed and annoyed at being rebuked by the prime version of himself. "I meant to keep you until Sssunday and do the ritual at Eassster, but thisss will be good enough."

"And if I'd just hid behind wards all weekend?" I asked.

"Ssso many hossstagesss here to convince you to russsh out like a foolisssh Gryffindor to sssave them. It was only a bit of a sssurprissse you did ssso unbidden."

At least Quirrell hadn't done both the stutter and the snakey speech-impediment; it was hard enough following him as it was, though I continued to be grateful for his tendency to monologue. I'd have hated to die without knowing what the hell was going on. "So, what, you need the blood of an enemy, forcibly taken as part of a ritual to get a new body? Are you going to jump right back on the scene, or is 'Gilderoy Lockhart' going to have a verifiable big hero moment, slay the basilisk, cover up the whoopsies, and then you've got two of you playing both sides?"

"I told you he wasss sssmart," Voldemort told his copy.

"I've had him in classes, and I have Lockhart's memories," the possessed professor agreed. "He actually taught _Lockhart_ how to teach defense classes. The man just kept making him forget about those little sessions, to preserve his own image." That hurt. And suddenly made a lot of sense.

"Already a wand-crafter asss well." I saw a small, deformed hand hold my unicorn-horn focus over the edge of the chair. "I believe a brother core to my own, burned wand." He began to flick it, trying to cast spells, "Incomplete work, however." I realized they must have taken my foci, and glanced over to look for the others, not seeing them. Then my mother's amulet was also dangled off the side of the chair. "A pity that Margaret McGregor'sss ssson would be my enemy."

"That was pretty much on you, man," I told him. "You kept trying to possess me."

"It wasss on _Margaret_ ," he snarled. "Again and again, that girl failed to follow her ordersss. Leaving her asssssignment. Taking up with a muggle. Bearing him the ssson that wasss owed to another. Ssshe defied me again and again and…" he suddenly stopped, as if struck by a thought. Then he began a coughing, hissing chuckle, as if he'd realized something hilarious. "Ssself-fulfilling. Your tale did not truly begin until you were touched by Lord Voldemort directly. Reborn that day from the firesss that burned your childhood. Well, if I wasssn't going to kill you before, I would _have to_ , now."

"Yeah. Ha ha ha ha…" I faked laughing along politely, "…good times. I don't get it?"

"Sssimply that I took a prophecssy too literally. No wonder the old meddler hasss been protecting you. He already figured it out. More luck to me, then, that he failed ssso utterly." The potion in the cauldron finally began to change color and emit its own sparks, the surface taking on a diamond-like sheen. "Well, it ssseemsss it isss time. Any more, quick quessstions, before your end?"

I wracked my brain, and finally came up with, "Severus Snape. Was he the Half-Blood Prince? And why did he really try to destroy you?"

"He wasss a half-blood, and his mother'sss name wasss Princsse, yesss. And the talesss are true. Asss with the Warren girl, I underessstimated how infatuation might ruin my plansss. It isss all the more humorousss that I needn't have worried about the Pottersss at all." More dark chuckling, and he ordered, "Macnair, Lockhart, begin."

Voldelockhart walked over toward the ugly giant relief of "Sal" while Macnair picked a small bundle up from the chair, and I realized that Voldemort had formed a tiny, deteriorating homunculus to inhabit. Had he looked like a rotting baby for months? If I survived this, I was going to have _so many jokes to make._

I paid careful attention to where my foci were left poking slightly over the edge of the arm of the chair.

With a look almost of pity at me, the horrifying, diminutive form of Voldemort was dropped into the cauldron. Across the chamber, Voldelockhart hissed something at the statue, the only true example of medieval art in the room, and its mouth opened into a huge black hole, from which the immense form of the basilisk began to slither. I averted my eyes, but suspected that it would lid its own with friendlies in the area.

I heard a sharp crack of metal on stone, and the possessed professor walked back over holding a large shard of the carving. Macnair intoned, " _Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son!_ " The professor placed the stone chip into the cauldron, turning it a vivid blue.

" _Flesh of the servant, willingly given, you will revive your master!_ " he followed, and Voldelockhart moved over to the basilisk with his ritual knife, hissing quietly and soothingly. I chanced a look and the snake's eyes _were_ closed. It truly was gigantic. The professor carefully prized off a few scales from under the snake's chin, and even there it looked like a ton of work to cut through. They, too, went into the cauldron, which began blazing red.

" _Blood of the enemy, forcibly taken, you will resurrect your foe,_ " he finished and Voldelockhart started to move toward me with that knife. My time for stalling was up.

The main thing that crossed through my mind was that Voldemort actually _had_ put me in a Bond villain death trap. The gallows humor would have been funnier if I was certain I could get _out_ of it.

## Pride Goeth

It was time to try my plan to escape from the knife-wielding psychopaths before they could use my blood to revive Lord Voldemort. The important thing I'd realized was that, while Lockhart had seen a lot of what I could do in his classes, we'd mostly been practicing _silent_ casting this year. As far as I knew, none of the Gryffindor tutors had shared with him that they'd also been teaching me to improve my _focusless_ casting.

" _Diffindo_ ," I muttered. Using the cutting charm bare-handed had become second nature, after months of using it for crafting work, but I had, specifically, originally learned it for just this kind of situation. After all, the _first_ time Voldemort had come after me, I'd splinched myself trying to get out of being tied up. This was _way_ safer.

I felt the ropes slacken holding me to the snake column and rolled away from the approaching possessed professor, managing to tag the ropes on my legs with another cutting charm as I went. On one rotation, I caught a look of surprise on his face. I was really pleased that he had a knife in hand rather than his wand, which gave me a chance. Sure enough, rather than going for his wand and just stunning me, he made an untrained lunge with the knife while cursing, "Dresden!"

Maybe neither Lockhart nor Riddle had actually done much stabbing or maybe the copied version wasn't running on the full competency set of Voldemort Prime. I was hoping for the latter, honestly. But I _had_ been doing a fair amount of work to account for my long, awkward limbs after the last fight with a Voldemort-possessed professor. I managed to turn my sideways roll into a kneel and kick to my feet, jumping forward like off of a runner's starting block and getting missed by the flailing knife attack.

Rather than trying to get fancy with wandless summoning, I just juked around the boxes and snapped up my bracelet, amulet, and "wand" from the chair. Macnair was only starting to react to the unexpected change in circumstances. He honestly didn't seem to be that quick or smart. The possessed professor had finally switched his knife hand and drawn his wand, so I dove to the ground with a grunt (adding ground-delivered damage to my left shoulder on top of my frequent knee batterings), used the chair and boxes as cover, and aimed the unicorn horn focus at him.

" _Libero!_ "

He got a shield up, and I was extra grateful that the Apologies were just as unblockable as their dark magic counterparts. It flew right through and hit him in the throat, the tell-tale cerulean and silver spreading out and glowing out of his eyes. Honestly, the hard part had been summoning up pride in Lockhart, who may have been repeatedly memory charming me rather than admit he didn't know what he was doing. But he'd been an okay teacher despite that, and I was still a fan of his writing.

With a look of shock in his eyes as the glow faded, Lockhart dropped the knife and used his hand to rip the diadem from his head and fling it as far away from him as he could. I heard it clatter against a wall closer to the front of the chamber. "What is…" he began, before Macnair wound up body checking him.

I was dubious that the Scottish Death Eater had realized his ally had become an opponent, or if he just wasn't paying attention on the way to retrieving a weapon. Either way, he wound up knocking Lockhart into the crates and grabbing for his axe.

Now the magical beast executioner getting his weapon was cause for concern, but I also realized that I was dangerously close to a snake so big it looked like it might be able to swallow me whole. I risked a glance and it still had its eyes closed, but seemed to be getting agitated at the noise. Did the Voldemort homunculus have enough awareness in the cauldron to give it orders? At least the version in the diadem hadn't thought of just telling the snake to stop me while it had the chance.

Though I guess if they needed my blood, most of what the basilisk could do to me would rather ruin it for the purpose.

Macnair had a crucial moment of realizing he'd just tackled what might well be a copy of his own boss, and Lockhart was still stunned by everything that was going on, so I used the opportunity to get some distance, retreating across the chamber and behind the columns. Before Macnair realized he needed to chase me, I managed to get my bracelet buckled around my wrist and my amulet back around my neck. I slipped my Apologies focus back into my belt pouch, which they didn't seem to have noticed; not that there was too much in there that would be useful.

"Professor, get the Death Eater!" I shouted as I peeked out to see the foppish adventurer obliviously picking himself up and dusting his robes off as Macnair charged me.

"Mr. Dresden, what… Oh dear! What a large snake!" he practically squeaked. If he'd lost all memory since he was possessed, this was going to be a lot harder to handle. I didn't have the time to catch him up, and he had the only useful weapon between the two of us.

"Macnair, now, snake, later!" I screamed, grabbing randomly into a pocket on my belt and flinging a handful of iron nails at the Death Eater in question, which at least got him to shield his face while I broke cover and ran.

I was _really_ beginning to regret leaving my staff and rod at home.

"I think it's coming back to me!" Lockhart shouted at our backs. "Oh! I have a great hex a man in Italy showed me for hunting dark wizards! _Nolite tenebris!_ " I didn't hear the sound of a spell firing. "Maybe it was a different wand motion?"

"Just use a stunner. Or a knockback! Something simple!" I yelled back, the big Death Eater having trouble keeping up with my long legs as we raced around the damp stone floor.

"Fine. _Tarantallegra!_ " he fired off a dancing jinx, which was at least something Macnair had to worry about a little. He turned to shield, opening up my lead a little more. And, importantly, getting me further from the snake who was writhing around, trying to understand what it was hearing.

And was the red light from the cauldron getting _brighter_ and _louder_?

"Oh! I'm remembering more! Did I kidnap you? Sorry about that. Mind control. What can you do?" Lockhart blathered. "You're sure the snake isn't the biggest problem? _Rictusempra! Glacius!_ " He managed to toss off a couple more jinxes, making Macnair realize he had a bigger annoyance to flatten.

"Not unless someone gives it an order, probably?" I answered, pausing behind a column opposite where I'd started and beginning to search my belt pouches for anything that would be useful to fight a person. I really should have made more erumpent potion. I hadn't thought I'd need holdouts like that once I was legal to cast magic without the Trace.

Lead shot and iron nails: not so useful without a staff to banish them at people. A couple of pieces of Remus' silverware: slightly promising, but not ideal. Snacks: at least I wouldn't starve to death. Girding and strengthening potions: they'd help if I could convince Macnair to _wrestle_ , but didn't help against blades and spells. Various crafting cuttings that I was too broke to throw out. My money. Some kind of cloth bag or shirt that I didn't remember stuffing into the back left pouch. No help.

"Well, good, then. I think this will make a hell of a next novel! _Impedimenta!_ " Lockhart began dancing backwards, circling the brightly glowing cauldron, Macnair gamely chasing him like it was an old slapstick sketch. "Of course, when I tell it, it will be me rescuing you, you understand? _Flipendo!_ That's just what my readers expect."

"Happy to back your version, just stop Macnair!" I insisted, though I rather worried that maybe he'd been memory charming other people that had a contradictory version of the events in his stories.

"Right! My version! _Obliviate!_ " he nailed the Death Eater with what might actually have been his only proficient higher-difficulty spell. Macnair slowed and went slack-jawed. "Okay! Great! Now, Dresden, oh, there you are! While I appreciate the approval, I'd rather tie up the loose end. You understand. _Oblivi–_ "

I was already shielding against the incoming memory charm when the cauldron exploded.

## Snake Eyes

The cauldron went off like a pipe bomb. Most potions were already dangerous when left on the heat for too long. Being part of a dark magic revivification ritual couldn't have made this one _less_ temperamental. Even with my shield up, I was flung back into the wall behind me and briefly staggered. Lockhart and Macnair at ground zero didn't stand a chance.

Unfortunately, the basilisk was also fine. It was far enough away and tough enough that it hissed in pain from being hit by explosively-accelerated cauldron chunks, but didn't actually seem to be harmed, even though the crates and chair half the distance between ground zero and the snake were reduced to splinters. Good snake. Nice snake. Simple, stupid snake made of super-durable, magic-resistant scales that wouldn't come after me without orders. Right?

I felt bad for Lockhart. The guy may have turned out to be a prick, but his fans, at least, would have deserved an open-casket funeral.

My brain was already considering this a victory while shifting toward how to get out of this room without inspiring the basilisk to think of me as a target. But then I heard it. After enough encounters, I was discovering that Voldemort as a wraith almost had a particular noise, like barely-heard horror movie ghostly sound effects. So I wasn't exactly surprised to see the black, smokey form congeal out of the haze of flash-evaporated potion fumes where the cauldron had been.

He actually spent a moment taking stock of the near-crater he appeared in, working out what must have happened. After a moment, his eyes, deeper dark pools within the spectral form, looked toward me and his unearthly voice explained, "I hate you ssso much."

"I… actually, you're not even at the top of my list, man," I shrugged, pulling out my Apologies focus so I could summon a patronus if he tried to possess me again. "Kind of hard to hate someone who you've seen as a creepy baby. Pitiful, really."

McGonagall was going to be _so mad_ I was still needling the guy. Hopefully she'd survived and would be able to chastise me. I figured, though, maybe if more people had brought him down a peg over the years, he'd have been less of a megalomaniac.

"You think you've won," he glowered. "But with no Dumbledore and no need to be sssubtle, why ssshouldn't I unleasssh dessstruction upon Hogwartsss? Let the basssilisssk reign until I am, inevitably, ressstored?"

Well, crap, I'd kind of hoped he couldn't command the big snake in this form. I tried a stalling tactic, "And just how sure are you that there's no Dumbledore? The guy's a planner. Doesn't share information. This whole thing could be to put someone in position to find your Chamber of Secrets and end the threat of your monster once and for all…"

Honestly, after saying it, it didn't seem _that_ far out of the realm of possibility. During the previous attack, Fawkes had showed up so fast that I couldn't even _really_ be sure the Headmaster had been truly paralyzed. I hadn't seen it for myself. And even if he was, surely he'd had a plan for if someone managed to take him out? We'd done okay with the rest of the old crowd at the Wizengamot with him missing.

With the old crowd. At the Wizengamot. Where Moody had happened to bump into me on the side where I'd felt some cloth object I didn't remember putting in my belt…

I yanked the cloth bundle that I'd passed over a minute before out with my left hand, glancing down at what unfurled into the Sorting Hat. "The… hell?" I baffled, shrugging and pulling the thing onto my head. I thought at it, "Hey, Hat, do _you_ know what's going on?"

"Took you long enough," the seemingly-sapient magic clothing graveled at me. "No weapons. Facing down great danger. No plan. Making jokes even though you're terrified. That's about what we expected. Take this, then put me back on."

"Ow!" I winced as something metal and heavy clocked me on the top of the head. I yanked the hat off, stowed my focus, and drew a _whole freaking broadsword_ out of the undetectable extension charm that was apparently part of the hat. It was gleaming, rune-etched silver and festooned with rubies, but seemed no less deadly for the ostentation. The name _Godric Gryffindor_ was distinct from the enchanting runes etched by the hilt.

Well _that_ was cool.

"The sssword!" Voldemort hissed. "The lassst treasssure I couldn't find! We will take it from your corpssse!" And, with that, hissing in that echoing magic that seemed to command the basilisk, the wraith dived at its head. Great. A _Voldemort-possessed_ giant snake was even worse than him giving it orders.

I pulled the hat back on my head and it told me, "Yank me down around your eyes." I did so, and suddenly the room went from true sight to an almost-painted scene. It was like the hat was sending me a colorful sketch of what it saw in the room.

And the hat was just a clever magical object, not a person, so it could look at basilisk eyes all day without a problem.

It took me a few stumbling steps to adjust to seeing the room as interpreted by Don Bluth, but the hat could _also_ apparently see in the dark, so that made it a lot easier to get a sense of the whole room. Long chamber, snake columns to either side, Slytherin carving at the far end, exit at the other end? Worth a shot.

The immense, possessed snake began to build its implacable momentum as I ran, trying to juke between columns to get it to follow me. But, with Voldemort driving, it wasn't easy to fake out. All the slalom did was slow me down. I broke right and dashed across the floor, hoping it at least couldn't corner well in all that bulk, sword held out to the side trying not to cut my own legs off. It was a cool weapon, but I'd prefer a focus.

"It _is_ a focus, Dresden" the hat told me, sarcastically.

Right! Thinking back to the very first time I'd met McGonagall and explained my problems with wands, Dumbledore had mentioned that Godric Gryffindor preferred to cast with sword and rod. And if this was the sword… " _Depulso!_ " I incanted, hoping to banish myself ahead.

And it worked. Maybe better than my staff. I sent myself on a mighty, flailing leap across the chamber. Which was good, because the snake _could_ corner pretty fast. I even stuck the landing, with a bit of a stumble on the wet stones.

But the hat-augmented vision of the other end of the chamber showed two immense stone doors shut fast and no obvious way to exit. I could maybe knock them open with some blasting charms, but not while being chased by the snake. Without Voldemort driving, I'd have tried to dive at the last second to see if I could get it to crush open the doors, but with how he cornered, it seemed unlikely.

Okay, what did I have? Lots of room to maneuver for both me and the giant snake, check. Magic sword that worked as a focus for unknown spells, check. Magic hat that protected me from basilisk vision but not its terrifying bulk, magic resistance, or venom that couldn't be neutralized by anything short of a phoenix, check.

"Look, you're going to have to put some of your _own_ work in," grumbled the hat, following my mental checklist.

"Any ideas on what kind of spells Godric could cast with the sword, rather than the rod?" I thought at it, while banishing myself at another oblique angle into the side of the room I'd started tied up in. "What spells did they even _have_ back then?"

"It's goblin-forged," the hat offered. "It increases in power by being used in battle and imbibes that which strengthens it, so it's likely picked up some new tricks when it's had to be used against other wizards over the years. But mostly sword-relevant magic?"

"So only slightly cheatery?" I thought at the hat. "If this counts as inheriting, probably very good against werewolves, too," I mused about the silver blade, before getting down to it. Wild Bill and I had been working on what spells a knife could use for Millicent's focus all year, so I had some ideas.

" _Diffindo!_ " I tried, lashing against a snake column as I ran past. It, indeed, left a mighty gash in the stone, but not nearly deep enough to topple it on the snake in the time I had available. " _Sectumsempra!_ " I tried, not-quite-blindly trying Snape's spell on the beast hissing like an angry locomotive behind me. It, again, worked, but even the powerful cutting curse splashed off of the snake's magic resistant scales.

I was running out of room on my side of the gallery, and I nearly tripped in detritus from the cauldron explosion, including some organic bits I probably shouldn't think much about. Running out between the columns, I banished myself again, barely clearing a shallow pool of water where the ground of the chamber had settled near Salazar Slytherin, which gave me a moment to try Wild Bill's favorite trick, " _Focus retractum!_ " The variation on the seize-and-pull charm allowed me to fling the sword at the snake, still connected by a line of light that would let me yank it back.

It definitely bit into a scale but didn't slide in like butter as I'd hoped. The basilisk reared up and roared. Snakes shouldn't be able to roar. I also didn't cut my arm off as I willed the sword to return to my hand along its magical tether, so that was a bonus. As it reared back, I remembered the scales that had been prized off from beneath its head for the ritual.

"Hat, double-check me here, is this _really_ dumb?" I wondered.

" _Maybe_?" it wavered. "It's no dumber than things I remember Godric doing. There's a _reason_ I put you in the house I did."

With that ringing endorsement for ye olde Gryffindor stupidity echoing through my brain, I did the last thing any wizard expects, even when they aren't currently piloting a multi-ton death machine.

I charged.

Now, I knew a little bit of how to use a sword in theory, from Moody's melee combat lessons (which, I groaned internally as I realized, were _also_ likely preparing me for this eventuality). And my battlecry was, " _Lumos solem!_ " to cause my amulet to blaze with a light as bright as sunlight. It didn't seem to quite unravel the dark magic of the snake as well as true sunlight, but it certainly made it unhappy enough to avert its eyes and rear further back. So this wasn't _really_ a St. George and the dragon situation, I told myself. Maybe an Alice and the Jabberwock situation?

Don't get crushed. Don't get bitten. Sword goes _there_. Snicker-snack!

My height was a big asset with how high the snake had pulled its head up, and I managed to nail the right spot (the handy little targeting circle the hat painted onto the vision was _also_ extremely helpful). With the missing scales, the blade slid in with only a little desperate pressure and into the skull above—which was fortunately less protected against magic swords than the outer armor. I thought I faintly heard a venom sac pop in the roof of the basilisk's mouth, then the silver went right into its brain.

And I only got _slightly_ hit by the suddenly spasming snake head. It certainly didn't nail me hard enough to fling me several yards onto the hard floor where I narrowly avoided a concussion. That was a tactical retreat and nobody can prove otherwise, except maybe the hat.

I'm pretty sure he's not allowed to share other people's secrets.

Regardless, I skittered back some more. A fifty-foot long, multi-ton snake in its death throes is not something you want to be _anywhere_ near. It was also flinging caustic venom out of the corners of its stapled-shut mouth. I hastily shielded just to be sure nothing spattered me.

Finally, the basilisk stopped struggling and went still, the head almost upside down on the floor, offering me the Sword of Gryffindor like some particularly gruesome Excalibur. But this time I was ready and not willing to give Voldemort another chance for mischief, so rather than walking up I fished out the unicorn-horn focus and summoned my patronus.

"See you next time," I waved mockingly to the shadowy wraith that extricated itself from the body before Mouse once again gave a silent bark, the wash of patronus energy expelling the evil spirit from Hogwarts for the second time in less than a year.

They should have been paying me fees as a Ghostbuster, I swear.

## The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe

Checking that the eyes of the snake were well and permanently closed, I pulled the Sorting Hat back up to normal hat position and adjusted to the dim light in the room again as I painfully pulled myself to my feet. Maybe, I mused, I should actually check in with Madam Pomfrey, before I shook some important tendons fully loose.

It took my foot and some leverage to yank the sword out of the snake and prove myself the true and rightful king of the Chamber of Secrets. I watched as greenish poison disappeared into the blade while the blood and brain matter just sloughed off, once again leaving a pristine weapon. "You said something about imbibing that which strengthens it. So does this thing have basilisk venom powers now?"

"Could be. Might have had them before?" the hat basically gave me a verbal shrug. "I just hang onto it between outings, and I'm not always kept up-to-date on what it's been doing."

"Fair enough," I told him as I limped over to retrieve Ravenclaw's diadem. "You want another founder's artifact to add to your collection?"

"Hover me over it," the hat suggested, and I did so, not exactly keen to even touch the mind-controlling artifact if I didn't have to. The hat wriggled away when it got within an inch, and I popped it back on my own head. "Whatever that is, I don't want it in _me_. Either cleanse it or destroy it."

I _seriously_ thought about trying to destroy it right there. But I knew one very talented Ravenclaw witch who would be _extremely_ upset with me if I didn't give her the chance to cleanse her house's artifact. And, honestly, as far as we'd gotten on our next soulfire spell, I thought there might be a chance it could work.

So, instead, I gingerly used my unicorn-horn focus to pick it up and drop it into the belt pouch that had previously held the hat. And I guessed I'd have to use tongs to pull it back out. I certainly wasn't putting my hand in.

From there, it was just the boring process of escaping from the Chamber of Secrets. Without a basilisk chasing me, it really wasn't _that_ difficult. Tom Riddle had been about my age when he'd _made_ the thing after all, so the doors weren't exactly spell-reinforced. If I'd had my blasting rod, I would have been out in moments. Instead, it took a couple minutes to chalk the exploding charm as a ritual circle on the door. Worked rather like a shaped charge.

Then it took me _another_ few minutes to transfigure a hole through the cave-in the magical explosion had caused in the next room. Young Tom Riddle had apparently _not_ studied structural engineering.

A little more hiking through the cave system and I had to groan. Really? A giant slide? I guessed it was easier on the basilisk than stairs, but _still_. The next time I talked to the guy, I was going to ask him if he said "Wheeee!" every time he visited. Fortunately, the sword was able to support enough motion-related spells that I was able to basically banish myself up the slide.

I am a powerful wizard, officially an adult, and very serious about… I can't even try to finish that sentence. Of _course_ I said, "Wheeee!"

One more chalked-ritual-shaped-charge and I emerged from the door above the slide into… Myrtle's bathroom. Chunks of the "nonfunctional" sink (and its neighbors) littered the floor, and I suddenly realized how much I'd overcomplicated my search for the basilisk. It wasn't a special snake rune that I needed to find other instances of, it was a kid going, "I put the snake behind this one." I wanted to kick myself, but I thought Myrtle was going to do it for me.

"Harry Dresden! _You blew up my loo_!"

"I… umm…" I tried to strike a heroic pose with the sword. "I killed the basilisk that killed you (more or less)?"

The floating ghost stared at me for a moment through her giant glasses before finally nodding, "Well. Okay, then. But I want it fixed!"

"Yes ma'am," I nodded. Honestly, Filch might be _more_ angry at me.

Not long after leaving the bathroom, I ran into Mathilda and the Weasley twins, who had been having their _own_ adventure dealing with Nott and the imperiused Professor Belby. That all sorted, I limped up to the seventh floor after the three of them, all of us hoping to find Professor McGonagall in the Room of Requirement.

The fact that the door was still there gave me some hope that the room didn't consider itself empty. "This place is a mess!" Mathilda exclaimed, upon catching a look at it. "How are we going to find her?"

I oriented myself and said, "I think it was over this way," before heading off to where I thought the aisle of cabinets had been before it got crushed beneath a sea of detritus.

Hoping we were digging in the right place, the four of us made quick work of the pile (more because of the three of them, who could easily cast levitation charms; the most precise I could get was banishing boxes off the top with the sword). We finally unearthed the wardrobe-sized piece of furniture that I thought I'd seen her fly into. Hoping I wasn't about to discover her mangled body, I carefully opened the doors.

I felt a pop of magic and was sure the professor just appeared as I opened the door. She even fell an inch or so to hit the back wall (currently laying mostly horizontal on the pile of trash). "That was… powerfully strange," she opined, blinking away disorientation.

"Did you meet Mr. Tumnus?" I asked. Mathilda didn't even get that reference, though I was sure the _Chronicles of Narnia_ were due for a movie adaptation one of these days.

"This isn't a wardrobe, Hoss," McGonagall scoffed at me. I was surprised _she_ got the reference, though I guess the books must have come out when she was fairly young. "I think this might be a vanishing cabinet, actually," she decided, after looking it over. "Fortunately broken, or who knows where I could have ended up. Still. Probably not safe to have inside the school. Is that the _Sword of Gryffindor_?" she boggled, finally noticing what I was holding.

"Turns out there was a two for one sale on founders' relics?" I joked, then asked, more seriously, "I guess that means you weren't in on Dumbledore's plan to turn me into a basilisk slayer?"

"He left notes to make sure I got the hat to Alastor," she nodded at my headwear, "But I'd hoped that was just for planning purposes. Do you mean to tell me that Albus planned for you to _fight a basilisk with a sword_?"

I shrugged, "Seems like it?"

" _When we get that old man unparalyzed_ ," she growled. Taking in the amusement of four of her students, she stepped the rest of the way out of the broken vanishing cabinet, visibly got control of her temper, and asked, "Is everyone alright?"

"Lockhart didn't make it," I told her, mostly regretfully.

"Professor Belby may need to go to the infirmary. For miscellaneous prank item damage," Mathilda shrugged.

"We're both injured and traumatized," Fred suggested, though he looked perfectly fine.

"We'll probably need at least a week off of classes," George grinned.

"Then it's fortunate you have a week left for your holidays then," the professor deadpanned, clearly realizing everything was basically fine if the twins could try to "skive off" classes. "Shame about poor Gilderoy. Albus will be upset he didn't fix the wards in time."

"To be fair, he _was_ trying to memory charm me to pretend he had been the one to defeat the basilisk. Before the basilisk had actually been defeated. He'd apparently been doing that all year every time I gave him some advice about his class." I explained.

That took her aback a bit, then she just shook her head. "Well, let's add that to the list of things for Poppy to check out. Follow me to the infirmary, all. I'll award points when we're all feeling better." As she started to lead the way, she muttered, too low for the other three to hear, " _Defense professors._ At least I _already know_ what's wrong with Remus."

"Hey! He was memory charming me!" I suddenly realized as I followed her out for the long trek down to the hospital wing. "I probably _won_ all those practice duels with Lockhart!"


	27. Dark Room 13: Down Time

## Flying Colors

The last few months at school went surprisingly easily, with the latest Death Eater plot handled. Remus, newly-signed mastery certificate in hand, went ahead and took over as defense professor at McGonagall's insistence. He and Kettleburn both took students for their classes down to see the basilisk corpse several times.

Kettleburn's lessons for creatures class were all about the various properties of the giant snake, and helping take samples before it fully degraded as the magic animating it faded away. Remus' (it was hard to remember to call him Professor Lupin) lessons were mostly about how one should run far, far away if they thought something like that was even in the area.

He stared really judgingly at me when he showed it to my class.

While Hogwarts wasn't exactly running out of space, McGonagall still took some trips with her NEWT classes to fix up the Chamber of Secrets into something that wasn't in danger of collapsing and possibly creating a giant sinkhole under the castle. Once Dumbledore was unparalyzed, the plan was to also tie it more firmly into the wards to prevent it being a potential back door into the school.

The twins were distraught when she also made an executive decision as acting headmistress to finally take Moody's advice and close up the rest of the secret passages out of the school. I half suspected the headmaster might reopen some of them when he awoke. After all, his plans probably often included students entering or leaving the school when no one but him was aware of it.

Was _right after_ someone had been paralyzed and insensate for three months too soon to pick a fight with him about being a manipulative old bastard? I asked myself that question a _lot_ while I waited for mandrake juicing day.

Fortunately, I had a lot of things to distract me (of the non-life-threatening variety). My own classes continued to be very interesting, and the sixth-year tests went on your report card but, well, I was my own guardian even if I cared. They were mostly to make sure you were on track for the NEWTs. However, the OWLs were upcoming for the fifth years, so I spent a ton of time helping my girlfriend study and/or relax.

Fine, yes, I finally admitted Mathilda was my girlfriend, fully expecting that would be the point everything would go horribly wrong.

I thought it was about to happen one night in the library in mid-May. It had turned out that Pince being absent didn't make that much of a difference, at least this close to exams. If you made too much noise, the seventh-years, fifth-years, or _Hermione_ would make sure you understood what a mistake that was. So I was very quietly quizzing Mathilda on her defense notes at our favorite corner table when Maeve sashayed by.

"Ah, Harry," she smirked, ignoring Mathilda. Putting every ounce of vampiness she could into it and turning her aura to "fully-arouse-then-flash-freeze" she said, "I really appreciated seeing your, ahem, giant snake the other day. When do you think we can go down again and take another tour of the Chamber of Secrets?"

She'd never _really_ let off the rumor war, but I'd been basically untouchable as the slayer of Slytherin's Monster. Maybe people still believed that I was having an affair with the "Malfoy" princess, but they didn't make a big deal about it if I wanted to deny it. So I guessed she'd decided to make a targeted insinuation in front of Mathilda.

For a while I'd been wondering how breaking me up with my girlfriend suited the inscrutable goals of the Unseelie. Then I started to realize that maybe Maeve was just _awful_. She was doing this purely because I wouldn't do what she wanted.

At this moment, pinned beneath the weight of her sidhe aura of impossible allure, I was having to use all my willpower not to buckle under and molest her right in the library. It left very little energy for telling her off and reassuring Mathilda.

But that didn't seem to be necessary.

Mathilda was a blur of red and gold as she was suddenly right in Maeve's face. I wasn't sure how she was even functioning under the aura, but maybe she'd worked up a tolerance over the last several months. In an extremely angry but dangerously quiet voice, she insisted, "Listen you manky, mingey _muppet_! Ti'n llawn cachu! Go find some more Slytherin boys to tease. I don't know what your deal is. I don't care! Dos i ffwcio dy hun y ast!"

The temperature was so cold that frost patterns started forming on nearby solid surfaces, Mathilda's breath steaming into a cloud around Maeve's head almost like she was breathing fire. The fae princess was almost as still as the basilisk victims, eyes slowly widening as if nobody had ever talked to her like that. I didn't speak Welsh, but I assumed Maeve did, and it hadn't sounded nice.

Ever so slowly, she turned to look at me, madness spinning behind those eyes, looking like she was working up to something. She lost control of the come hither aura and I could finally speak, so I interrupted whatever she was about to say, "I warned you about this before. You just _attacked_ us. You've been attacked _back_. I'll consider the matter settled if _you_ do."

She didn't exactly acknowledge it, but she didn't say what she'd been clearly winding up. Instead, the temperature gradually rose until she had mastered herself to give me one, curt nod and then walk away.

I didn't think the matter was really settled. Especially since we were off behind some shelves but not completely private, and I already heard muttering from kids that had been watching and were going to pass it on.

"'Thilda, that was awesome, and hot, and amazing, but…" I quietly started, everything I wanted to warn her about snapping behind the stupid fae immunity to giving away their secrets.

"But I just started a fight with a sidhe," she nodded, a little shell-shocked, moving around to my side of the table and collapsing into my lap, her adrenaline crashing.

"How…" I couldn't even finish the question. I hated this geas and it was going up my list of research to break.

"Oh, Luna told me a while ago. I didn't really believe her. Until now!" She pulled my arms around her, and the warm contact was especially nice in the still-frigid corner.

"You know there's nothing going on between me and Maeve right?"

"Well, 'nothing' is a strong word. There's clearly _something_ you can't talk about." As she explained her theories, I was able to manage a nod around the prohibitions. "And I want to figure it out! I want to figure out what it is you can't tell me! But I get it. You're not friends. She's a bad fairy."

"I'm worried about you being on her list," I said.

"I am too! I don't want to fight bad faeries! I don't want there to _be_ bad faeries! I want to finish my exams. I want to become a respected magizoologist!"

I sighed, "The more you stick around me…"

"No! You stop!" she barely managed to keep her voice intense but low, turning in my lap and looking me dead in the eyes from a couple inches away. "I knew you were dangerous! You didn't trick me! I could have walked away after the wolves. After the Death Eaters!"

Hell's bells, in barely more than a year of having known her, her life had been in danger how many times? It only took one bad wizard and one misplaced dark fire spell to do for Elaine, and Mathilda was now up against a queen of the freaking sidhe on my account. I had to…

"I said stop! I see your brain working, Harry Dresden. You spend all this effort protecting people. Who protects you? Your friends. Maybe sometimes you have to fight You-Know-Who alone. Sometimes there's a big snake! And, if I could've, I'd have been there. I'd have had your back.

"I'd have probably wet myself. But I'd have had your back!"

It was hard, having someone that close, that intense, peering directly into me. It wasn't even love. I didn't think we were there yet. It was friendship, which was even harder to deny. Somehow, I'd been putting in the investment, and other people were investing back. As an orphan that had only had one close friend, who'd ultimately betrayed me in the worst way, it was hard to understand.

It was one thing to realize you were willing to go the extra mile to protect the innocent. It was another to realize that they _appreciated it_.

I tried one, last, half-hearted, "I mean, a basilisk is one thing. That's just magizoology, but Maeve…"

"So what if she's some secret, powerful sidhe that drips sex and snow?" Mathilda shrugged, smirking playfully through her own, obvious anxiety about it, dropping deep into her Welsh accent. "I'll smack that barmy ferret right in her pretty gob, she keeps coming after my man."

## Mandrake Juice

In the final quidditch match of the year, Ginny _didn't quite_ edge out Katie Killick, the soon-to-be-graduating Hufflepuff seeker, for the snitch, but it was so close on points that Gryffindor wound up winning the quidditch cup even though Hufflepuff took the match. Obviously overjoyed but not content to rest on his laurels, Oliver was already planning how to get Ginny a better broom for the next year even as Gryffindor kicked off an epic party for our first win of the cup in years.

After all the points McGonagall had eventually settled on for saving the school from basilisks and Death Eaters, we were basically guaranteed to win the house cup as well, if you cared about that kind of thing. I'd overheard the twins doing math to figure out how many pranks they could get caught for and still not blow our lead by the leaving feast. Personally, I figured that a budget for getting away with shenanigans was an even better use for the points I'd earned than getting house-colored banners at the end of the year.

Sneakily, the staff had scheduled the completion and delivery of the mandrake restorative draught to the victims of the basilisk to occur during the match. I imagined the celebration in the Hufflepuff common room for their match win was intensified just as much by Beatrice Haywood returning as Gryffindor's celebration about the cup burst into even higher gear when Dean Thomas walked into the common room.

I mostly figured they'd done it that way to give Dumbledore a day to recover before I started bothering him for answers.

He finally saw me while the fifth-years were in their second day of OWLs. I dropped the Sword of Gryffindor, the Sorting Hat, and the Diadem of Ravenclaw (safely wrapped) on his desk, then sat back in the chair across his desk. "How much of that was planned?"

The old wizard shrugged, though clearly pleased to regard the three artifacts I'd brought. "Less than you imagine, I'm sure. Tom Riddle makes plans. Plans require everything to proceed in order, or they begin to fall apart. As I reached a certain age, I began to prefer putting many strategic goals into motion. The trick is to keep them from interfering with _one another_."

"You weren't just faking being paralyzed," I suggested. If he had been, he probably wouldn't have kept up the charade for another month and a half.

"Regrettably, no. I'd expected some kind of play to force me out of the school, politically. I'm actually not sure why they didn't leverage Lucius to use the school board. If I'd been available, I could have directed Fawkes to find you and bring help. I'm very glad Alastor and Minerva remembered the fallbacks."

"I don't like being a chess piece," I practically growled. It might have had more effect if I'd had a few more years of work on my facial hair and any hope at all of beating him in a fight.

"Mr. Dresden. _Harry_ ," the old man stared me down. "I regret to inform you that it was _not I_ that gave you this status. If I've arranged the board to provide you the opportunity to go where you'd prefer rather than where you are directed, it doesn't mean that I am the one whose hand is upon your back."

That hurt. Justin. My godmother. Voldemort. Maeve. Even Umbridge. I had to admit, at least Dumbledore was right that his manipulations seemed to result in things I wanted to happen anyway. I must have stared back at him for a whole minute, not worried about meeting his eyes. The few secrets I still had from him, I pretty much couldn't divulge even if I wanted to, so what did I have to fear from his mind reading? Finally, I just said, "I want to be included, not manipulated. And you need to delegate more, anyway, sir. Everything could have fallen apart with you taken out."

"The Order of the Phoenix," he smiled, revealing the name of his old crowd, "has more autonomy than even they believe. After all, I hear I was unnecessary to the defeat of Delores' legislation, and clearly..." he just gestured at the artifacts I'd brought him. Seeing me tense up, he raised a hand, "But, yes. While I still worry about others trying to push you where they will, it's clear you will fight for the same things upon which the Order was founded. I'll see you are included when next we meet."

Mollified, I nodded, then said, "Penny wants to try to finish developing the next Apology and see if we can clear the Diadem."

"Certainly, though under my strict observation. Even from here, I feel it reaching out, trying to convince me to put it on. I cannot allow it to be with students unsupervised."

"Fair. You know he probably hid it in the school when he was here for the job interview? Or had someone slip it in about the same time. It was Beatles-era." Dumbledore merely smirked, though I thought he might not know what a "Beatle" was and would be doing research later to pretend to be all-knowing. "It's way more intelligent than a magical portrait. There's no form of memory encoding I'm aware of that could do what that thing did."

"And you have theories, Harry?" the old man prompted. Was switching to a first-name basis just familiarity, or acknowledgement that I'd become an adult, not just his student?

I suggested something I'd been thinking about for a while. " _Arcanos_ has three major monsters that can turn you to stone… but only one that's an undying wizard you just can't kill for good until you destroy the gem in which it's hidden its soul…"

That actually got a widening of his eyes. " _Arcanos_ is a muggle fantasy game, yes?" I nodded and he went on, "It's surprising that such information has percolated through myth though we've worked so hard to prevent the wizarding world from rediscovering it. If I give you a topic of research, can you actually keep it from spreading all the way through Gryffindor and Ravenclaw within a week? This knowledge is dangerous."

"Like Penny says, sir, security through obscurity never works," I smirked. "But I won't spread it around on purpose."

He sighed, then explained, "Then look up the tale of Herpo the Foul. If anyone asks, it will be because he was the first to breed a basilisk. However, you're actually looking for the secret of his long life."

"You could just tell me," I shrugged.

"Knowledge earned is firmer held than knowledge gifted," Dumbledore smiled. "And you need something to do while your friends sit their exams."

"If I find what I think I'm going to find… should we go ahead and smash the Diadem, even though Penny wants to purify it?"

"An ordered mind is not fully incapacitated by the basilisk's gaze. I found that being paralyzed gave me ample time to _think_. Our enemy did not call all his minions in his weakness…"

"He _was_ a creepy baby. Not a look that inspires loyalty," I interjected.

"Quite. But in his diminished state, I cannot believe that he would risk placing his source of immortality so fully within my grasp rather than draw upon other resources. If we'd put the clues together about poor Irma earlier, we could have easily rent his soul adrift were this its only anchor."

"So that's _not_ his phylactery?"

"That's _not_ the term," he corrected. "But, I believe, if it _is_ … it may not be the _only one_."

I suddenly remembered, and pointed at the sword, "He said that was the last treasure he couldn't find!"

Finally, the old man gave me a genuine nod that I'd given him information he hadn't been aware of, "Of course! There were rumors of his career after graduation, appraising artifacts for Borgin and Burkes, and strange deaths before he quit. If he was seeking artifacts of the founders… that is a vital thread to unravel."

We both sat, thinking, for a few minutes. "One from each house, plus his core?" I thought out loud, finally. "He wouldn't stop at five, unless he had to."

"Three or seven would be far more stable," Dumbledore agreed. "I may need to consult those that might have inadvertently helped him with his research. If he started after Hogwarts, he could have learned the techniques anywhere, but if he began while in this school, I may have a place to start."

"I'll do my own research," I agreed, thinking about Bob. "And we'll let you know when we're ready to test the exorcism charm.

"I appreciate everything you've done, Harry, and I'm glad you came through it whole. I regret that I cannot promise I won't ask similar of you in the future."

"As long as I get a say in where I'm getting pushed," I shrugged.

He twinkled at me, and asked, "When has anyone _ever_ pushed you in a direction you didn't wish to travel for long, Harry Dresden? Now! I believe Irma has recovered and wants to thank you as _herself_ for your efforts improving the fiction section in the library."

It turned out she did. And also, she wanted me to spend all afternoon finding all the muggle literature the twins and I had haphazardly shelved and move it to her new muggle fiction section.

Some of those paperbacks I'd hidden back in _October_. I didn't even remember where they were.

## A Frayed Nott

"And then whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!" Seamus gestured with his nearly-complete blasting rod, pantomiming for the enchanting club. "That spider was on fire! And that one! And another one! They'll n'er mess wi' a Finnegan, again!"

"Ron was also a huge help," Neville explained, once Seamus got it out of his system, "for all that he was terrified. He was just sniping any that got too close to one of us." Left unsaid was that he was probably hiding under the invisibility cloak, which at least a few people in the room might not have actually found out about yet. The way the kids couldn't keep a secret, it was only a matter of time.

"You're underselling yourself, as always, Neville," Hermione chided. "Without you using freezing charms to slow them down and bunch them up, the ones in the back could have easily overwhelmed us. For my own part, I found that my issues with accuracy were largely mitigated by having such a target-rich environment."

"Like fish in a barrel!" Seamus chortled.

Percy, who had been going increasingly pale as the kids detailed their adventure into the forest while I'd been fighting the basilisk, turned to me and asked, "Harry, is my hair going gray?"

I made a show of inspecting it, then shook my head. "Not that it wouldn't have a good reason." It had taken over a month—until the last enchanting club of the year—for us to finally get the kids to cough up why they hadn't been around even though they'd been on campus when everything was going down during my fight with the basilisk. Turned out they'd been running to get Hagrid to help fight off the invaders, noticed the Ministry arresting him, and for some reason _listened_ to him when he told them to, "Follow the spiders." They'd found the semi-friendly and all-grown-up talking spider that Hagrid had raised all those years before, Aragog. They'd also found that the van-sized invertebrate had been _breeding_ for 50 years. The few acromantulas that I'd run into were just a tiny fraction of the seething horde of the things, and the younger spiders weren't exactly willing to pass up a free meal of four children.

I felt like a bad friend. I hadn't even _realized_ Hagrid had been arrested over suspicion that he was behind the attacks. Since he'd been blamed for the last time, he was the number one suspect this time as far as the Ministry was concerned (it didn't surprise me at _all_ to hear that Dawlish had been primary auror at the arrest). At least the indisputable presence of the basilisk corpse saw Hagrid fully exonerated; McGonagall had seen to that.

"I am going to say this very carefully," Percy began, his skin going from pale to flushed. "And understand that I say this to you as your _prefect_. The words I will have with Ron later as his _brother_ will be _much_ stronger. Hagrid is a very nice man. He is a fixture of Hogwarts who never means for anyone to get hurt. But he is a _terrible_ judge of danger. _Why_ would you go scrambling off into the Forbidden Forest by yourselves? What _foolishness_ could have compelled you? You were fighting a horde of class quintuple-X creatures! You easily could have died! A whole squad of _hit wizards_ could have died!"

That finally punctured the invincible pride the kids were feeling and Neville admitted, "Yeah. If the unicorns hadn't shown up to give us a ride out, I don't think we would have made it."

At least that probably meant the school's student-protecting fortune wards worked all the way into the forest. I was thinking what to add, when Draco piped up, "I'll speak to _my father_ about getting funding to clear them out of the forest. _Hagrid_ ," I could tell the boy had wanted to call him _that oaf_ , "should have warned someone about this _decades_ ago. A whole army of acromantula right next to the school. Honestly!"

"Where did the _second_ one come from?" Luna asked, in her usual non-sequitur. We all looked at her and she explained, "You-Know-Who told Harry that he used Hagrid as a scapegoat. So he knew about the acromantula. He probably brought in a female for this Aragog to mate with so he could be _sure_ there would be an army of dark creatures in the forest. He might have _already_ had a female, since he had the venom he used to kill Myrtle."

As conspiracy theories went that was… rather coherent. I suggested, "You should write that up for the Quibbler, Luna. Maybe it would help Mr. Malfoy convince the right people in the Ministry that it's a problem." Everyone nodded, and I saw Draco make a connection about the utility of being friends with a reporter, even if it was a 12-year-old who wrote for a tabloid.

"I could get pictures!" Colin grinned.

"No Colin!" everyone told him, all at once.

After the club finally started to wander off back to various common rooms, I noticed Draco hanging back. "What's up?" I asked.

"I have a friend who'd like to talk to you," the boy explained. "He should be waiting for us across the way."

Only slightly worried about another trap, I nodded to Draco but caught Percy's eye on the way out. My roommate gave me a thumbs-up that he would hang around just in case. Or maybe he gave me a thumbs-up that I was politicking with the Malfoys; sometimes it's hard to tell with that guy. Either way, he knew who'd seen me last if I didn't make it back to the tower.

But the classroom Draco led us into was empty save for Theodore Nott, Draco's year-mate who had been acting like he wanted to talk to me all year. I made a guess as I saw him, "Going to have a better summer without a Voldemort homunculus hiding out in your house this year?"

His eyes widened. "How did…" Acting like you were all-knowing was like _cocaine_ for wizards. No better high. It honestly explained a lot about Dumbledore. "...well, frankly, yes. I wanted to apologize for not warning you earlier, and thank you for the assistance." The boy's voice was high, starting to crack with puberty, and he was likely to be a beanpole like Ron and Neville soon. His polished way of speaking was at odds with his affected slouch. Trying to not be too much of a pureblood, maybe.

"No worries, man," I told him. "I know what it's like to have a dark wizard for a mentor." Technically, I knew what it was like to have two, between Justin and my godmother. "You don't really know what they'd do to you if you stepped out of line."

He sighed with relief that I got it. "I want you to know that you don't have to worry about me. If my father orders me to do something to you, I'll just tell him it's too risky." He shrugged. "It really is. You killed all three of them _and_ the basilisk?"

"Well, not all at once," I tried to give a nonchalant shrug. It probably wouldn't hurt to let Slytherin house continue to think I was an unstoppable badass. "It's cool that we're not enemies. Let me know if you need any direct help getting out, if it gets bad again."

Surprised at the extra offer of help, the boy simply nodded his thanks, then waved goodbye as he slipped out of the room. As soon as he was out of earshot, Draco said, "Speaking of…" I nodded for him to continue. "...if you wind up going on any extended field trips this summer, I'd like to come along."

I didn't really have any firm plans. My friends had talked about maybe taking a trip before senior year. Remus hadn't been able to keep secret from me for long that he'd gone ahead and gotten _The Prince's Potions_ distributed to wizarding bookstores, and I saw a pretty staggering bit of profit for a teenager (a lot of which I'd shared with Percy and Penny). So, despite being habitually broke, we might actually be able to pull something off. I hadn't considered taking any younger kids, but the way the Weasley family worked, it was probably inevitable.

"You're okay going on a trip that might be mostly Gryffindors? Your _father_ is okay with it?" I asked.

"He _suggested_ it," Draco drawled, "at least after I had… reservations… about spending all summer in a house with my _aunts_."

I sucked in a breath. I hadn't even thought about that. Having Bellatrix Lestrange secretly camping in your house was already probably stressful as hell. Having her _and_ Maeve would be like renting a room in Arkham Asylum. "Are your _parents_ going to be okay?"

He nodded. "Mother is protected by her sister's good will. Father is able to handle them. It's honestly not _dangerous_ , really. I'd just rather be almost anywhere else when they're around." He remembered something, "Of course, I can contribute sufficient funds to pay my way and more, which might _elevate_ the kind of holiday you can manage."

I decided not to be offended. The kid had expensive tastes. "Got it. You'll pay to bump us up so you're not stuck in whatever flophouse we decided to stay in to save money."

I thought about it for a second. It _could_ be a Malfoy plot, but I didn't think Lucius would put his son in any danger and Draco was worse at espionage than his friend Nott, so I didn't think he was knowingly trying to trick me. And I _had_ been working to get him some better role models.

How bad _was it_ at Malfoy Manor that Lucius was giving _me_ a literal blank check to babysit his son for the summer? Or was he just playing a long game to get me more fully used to taking Malfoy money? I was more comfortable keeping an eye out for a knife in my back than puppet strings being tied to my wrists. But I probably just had to make sure I didn't get too comfortable becoming part of Draco's entourage, right?

"I'll talk to the rest of the crew," I told him. "But I think it will probably be okay. I'll let you know."

He smiled, genuinely, and headed out after Theodore. I found Percy waiting for me up the hall, having had my back after all. "What was _that_ about?" he asked.

"Nott wanted to say he didn't support his dad trying to kill me and apologize for not warning me sooner. Draco… ummm… how do you feel about taking him along if we take a trip this summer? He'd apparently rather hang out with us than his new aunt."

"Interesting," Percy mused as we walked. "Actually, I had been meaning to mention: my parents have been trying to arrange the funds to visit my eldest brother this summer, and it might be quite the educational field trip for all of us to visit Egypt…"

## Down Time

"What classes did you finally decide on, Hermione?" I asked the young witch, as McGonagall did a final whip-round of the breakfast table to confirm the rising third-years' electives. The banners around the room were still in Gryffindor colors after the previous night's feast, and we were all trying to hurriedly top up on protein and carbs before the long train ride home.

"You convinced me," she sighed, "I'm just taking three classes. I looked deeper into the available research on temporal theory and while the general _consensus_ is that time is self-consistent, there's still a lot of scholarship about the risk of paradox and I don't know if I want to worry about that, so…" she finally took a breath, "...runes, arithmancy, and muggle studies." She took in my raised eyebrow at the last class, which she could probably _teach_ , and explained, "I can take it with my roommates, and Professor McGonagall said I can do an extra credit project to outline possible improvements to the curriculum. Plus, Hagrid said he'd be happy to help me self-study care of magical creatures, and I met Professor Trelawney and I think you're right about how much I'd learn from her versus just taking the material independently."

I nodded. I hadn't had much interaction with the flakey divination professor myself since my placement exams, but my impression was that serious, task-oriented Hermione Granger might be in danger of eventually _stabbing_ the poor woman, especially sleep-deprived from squeezing extra hours into every day with a time machine. Hopefully she wouldn't be similarly upset once she actually found out how confused Professor Burbage was about the muggle world. A lot of things might have been different if Quirrell had just stuck around in the position rather than going off to get possessed by Voldemort.

Though, now that I thought about it, maybe the tidbits about the muggle world Quirrell had dropped in his defense classes were more a sign about how much _Voldemort_ knew. I had missed my chance to find out if Voldemort-prime had ever updated his musical tastes from the Beatles, but Tom Riddle had actually grown up muggle, a lot like I had, honestly. Dumbledore had eventually mentioned to me that Tom had been left at an orphanage after the death of his magical parent (through whom he, presumably, descended from old Sal).

I liked to think that I was _much_ better adjusted than Tom Riddle, despite my years in the system.

"What about you, mate?" Ron asked. "Are you going to be the professor's assistant for defense?"

I nodded, "Re– I mean Professor Lupin basically insisted, though more for weekend and evening tutoring than sitting in on classes. I still have a full class load myself." After both of us realized I'd basically figured out Lockhart's curriculum for the year for him, even though he'd then memory charmed it out of my brain, it seemed natural that I'd help Remus write his own lesson plan over the summer and let helping out be most of my NEWT grade. I was pretty sure I'd also get called on to substitute teach for the lower-years on the days he was recovering from the full moon.

"Students, you now have one hour until you need to be packed and getting on the coaches down to Hogsmeade," McGonagall announced, kicking off a frantic scrambling of Gryffindors that hadn't even started to pack yet. The other houses seemed a little more sedate about it.

As the table cleared, I couldn't help but get a good look across the way at Maeve, effortlessly moving from group to group getting final yearbook signatures and chatting away as if they were her best friends. She'd clearly already gotten her hooks into a bunch of Hufflepuff as she'd intimated earlier in the year, and some of the middle-year Ravenclaws that were furthest away from Penny and Luna's influence on either end. It worried me.

"We'll stop her," Mathilda told me, "somehow."

I smiled. The forces arrayed against me were powerful and incomprehensible, but I had people in my corner, too. I wrapped my arm around my witch's shoulder and asked, "What did I do to deserve you?"

"Well," she pretended to think, "Saving the school from a giant snake? Driving off an undead dark lord? Multiple times! But if that isn't enough, you can pay down that imposter syndrome by helping me carry my trunk down to the coaches?"

"Deal," I smiled, and we went about the business of navigating the chaos of end-of-year in Gryffindor tower.

An hour later we were rattling down the drive to Hogsmeade, sharing a Thestral-drawn carriage with Oliver and Alexis (who were still together after the year and who, Oliver had smugly told me after spring break, would _also_ have to pass on any future trips to visit the unicorns). "So is there a final summer plan?" Oliver asked.

"Still a little up in the air," I shrugged. "Sounds like money's still a little tight for the Weasleys, so they're not sure how long of a trip they can take. Internships and camps?"

Mathilda explained, "Charlie Weasley is probably going to be there, yeah? He can supervise my 'internship' for credit! My uncle can sign off on it as long as we go to some of the local creature preserves. Lots of cool magical beasts in Egypt!"

"I wish _my_ family was that deep in the Ministry," Alexis pouted. "I don't have to work, at least, and I can go as long as I get my summer homework done and apprenticeship applications out before we leave."

"I'm just doin' two weeks of the camp this year," Oliver allowed. "Though hopefully wi' most of the team probably goin', we can get some practice in over'n Egypt." I was sure _that_ would go over great with the rest of them.

"Cool. Hopefully everyone else is equally flexible," I simply agreed. "I was thinking about working for Ms. Dervish again, but two months really isn't very much summer break if there's a vacation in the middle." At least it would give Remus time to move fully into his professor's accommodations at the school. I really appreciated that he was still putting me up for probably half the summer. But maybe I should start figuring out what I'd do for the next winter holiday. Or for when I had to find my own living arrangements after I graduated.

Also, when it came down to it, I was now probably even higher on a lich's hit list than Albus Dumbledore, the most powerful wizard of the age. And I was somehow deeply wrapped up in an inscrutable elfin plot that had placed a sidhe queen to serve as my school's very own mean girl. _And_ I still had a one-strike-and-you're-out legal ruling due to a hard-headed auror that may never be rescinded since I'd burned my bridges with the senior undersecretary of the Ministry.

But all of that would keep. For the first time in my life I seemed to have it all: a support network of friends, a girlfriend, adults I could count on, and enough money in my pocket that I didn't have to worry about the _next_ meal. For one short summer, I had all the privileges of an adult and all the freedoms of a teenager.

I could fret later, but I decided to count my blessings now. The perils of the world would still be there after I took my last summer vacation as a student.

**End of Year 2**


	28. Dark Room 14: Gorilla Warfare

## Appendix 1: The Apologies

_This is the writeup I turned in to Dumbledore at the end of the year to show how our spell research was going._

There are four known dark magic spells that are based upon the principles of hellfire. Three are known as the Unforgivables, and carry a guaranteed prison sentence if proven to be used. The last, fiendfyre, would probably be in the same group, but few can even cast it, and even those dark wizards that can do so fear to use it due to how hard it is to control. That seems to be why it was never similarly made instantly illegal: choosing to cast it is usually its own death sentence. All four spells resonate on an unusual frequency that makes most magical defenses useless. The only safe response is getting out of the way or allowing it to expend its energy on another target.

The **fiendfyre curse** is a corruption of the fire-making charm, and requires fear to catalyze. It essentially summons up an imago of pure hellfire: a terrifying animal mascot of insatiable, impossibly-hot flames. It will generally burn until it has consumed all possible fuel in reach, especially if the caster manages to survive unleashing the curse to provide continuing magic to power the imago. It's said to be hotter than dragon's fire, and can destroy virtually anything, unweaving immense protective magics as easily as it cuts through dense timber. It takes a strong caster to guide it, and an even stronger one to put it out early. Unlike the "true" Unforgivables, simply casting the spell doesn't seem to damage the caster's soul, though deaths as a result _will_ (and it's very easy to kill _many_ people if it gets out of control). This likely has something to do with it being the _simplest_ expression of hellfire of any of the four curses.

The **dominating curse** (the imperius) requires the caster to feel spite toward the target. It essentially copies the mythological powers of the succubi, wrapping the soul of the target in the most innocent-seeming of hellish flames. It's often like being in a refreshing sauna, surrounded by embracing heat and light. The emotional decision-making parts of your mind can't come up with cogent arguments for not following the directions of the caster. Sadly, the more mechanical parts of the brain aren't incapacitated, so victims can pursue their orders with their full skill and intelligence. For those that are strong-willed or simply disagreeable, it can be broken, with less effort the weaker the caster. The biddable, however, can be subsumed for extended periods without it even being obvious to onlookers. Fortunately, only one victim at a time can be maintained by any caster; not even Voldemort can manage an army of mind control victims without an equal number of cooperators to cast the curse. Imperius "chains" _are_ possible, however, where one victim casts the curse upon another. But it is difficult to find someone weak-willed enough to succumb but also a strong enough caster to control another target. Regardless, the strength reduces with each step in the chain until it is easy to break.

The **torture curse** (the cruciatus) requires an extremely potent anger at the target, even true rage. It essentially bathes the target's very soul in hellish flames, interpreted by the mind as impossible pain throughout the body that never abates. Prolonged exposure can damage the interface between the target's mind and soul, usually expressed as symptoms that seem a lot like having a stroke, even though no damage is evident in the brain itself. The fortunate may just lose some level of motor control, temporarily or permanently. The _unfortunate_ might be driven into catatonia.

The **killing curse** requires actual hatred to cast, ideally for the target but research suggests that _self-hatred_ might allow one to cast the spell (or perhaps that just slips effortlessly into misanthropy). Where the torture curse burns the soul slowly and painfully, the killing curse is like a knife of hellish plasma, instantly cutting away all ties between the soul and the body. It is in some ways an instant and peaceful way to go, because of how fast and cleanly it strikes. No one has ever provably survived being struck by it, though there are apocryphal tales of those who might be described as having robust souls not quite dying instantly.

The little-understood energy soulfire is a celestial counterpart to hellfire. While it presents, conceptually, as silver flames, they are more like a protective, empowering corona than a damaging force. Legends explain that spells directly empowered by the energy are more _real_ than their counterparts, lasting longer and having greater strength and durability. Spells that utilize it seem to be as indifferent to magical protections as the Unforgivables, passing right through magical shields. Currently there are only two known spells that utilize this energy, though two more are in development.

The **patronus charm** is the counterpart to fiendfyre, and shares many similarities to light-making spells. It requires a feeling of safe happiness to catalyze, in its fullest expression generating a protector imago in the form of an animal. The summoned beast (or mist/shield for lesser castings) radiates a mood-enhancing aura that naturally drives off creatures of darkness. Fully cast ("corporeal") patronus imagos can sometimes seem to have an almost physical effect on dark magic creatures.

The **empowering charm** (the libertas) requires a sense of pride in the target, forging a conduit for the caster to augment the recipient's willpower. This can dispel its counterpart, the imperius. It is possible, however, that a weak libertas caster, a weak-willed target, and a strong dark wizard may prevent the curse from breaking (research pending). It also seems to strengthen the recipient's mind enough to throw off other forms of mental manipulation, like the confundus. It does not, sadly, seem to remove memory charms in most cases.

The **exorcism charm** (incantation-related title pending arithmancy work) should work similarly to the torture curse, but using soulfire instead of hellfire. This _should_ have only a positive effect on those with undamaged souls, but slip into the cracks of souls damaged by dark magic and cause them psychic pain, likely through a barrage of forgotten emotions like guilt and shame. The expectation is that it _should_ work to separate dark spirits that have attached themselves to objects or innocent beings, ending wraithly possession and similar effects where one soul or soul-like entity is latched onto another. It is currently under active development, and its catalyst emotion and incantation are not yet known.

The **soulfire charm** should be a counterpart of the killing curse, directing a focused blast of soulfire at the soul of the target. The primary hope is that it should serve as a way of dispatching dark entities that are immune to all mortal means of harm, such as dementors and wraiths. Any other effects are unknown at this time, as is the incantation and emotion, since all information is purely theoretical. Development is planned after the completion of the exorcism charm.

## Appendix 2: Gorilla Warfare

 _Dicta-quill recording is proceeding overseen by Auror-Apprentice Nymphadora Tonks. Auror Alastor Moody interviewing underaged witness Mathilda Grimblehawk. Minerva McGonagall is here_ in loco parentis _for this interview._

_Ms. Grimblehawk, please describe the events of this afternoon in Hogwarts in your own words and to the best of your recollection._

So! I had gotten back early from lunch. I was studying in the Gryffindor common room with the second-years. We'd all stayed back at school for the break. I have OWLs coming up. I'm not sure why _they_ did. Hermione—Granger: top of her year, our house—always thinks she's going to have a hard time. So she studies very hard. This time, she's got her friends doing it. That girl's going to be the first muggleborn Minister.

Anyway! Last year, study sessions with the lower-years seemed to help the fifth-years. You get to review that year for OWLs, and the year gets to review for their exams. I think Penny—Clearwater: Ravenclaw prefect, she's so nice—came up with the idea. But I did it last year because of Harry Dresden.

You know Harry, right? Of course you do. You interviewed him after the Death Eater attack at Hogsmeade last year. Oh! And you've probably been tutoring his year in defense, too, Auror Moody? Well last year he was just my friend. And at the attack, we'd just kind of got together. But now he's basically my boyfriend. I think he's even about ready to admit it to himself.

_Tonks! We don't "high-five" witnesses during an interview._

Sorry! But we were in the common room. I think we were reviewing astronomy. Harry's awful at astronomy. He barely passed his OWLs on that. I've been mostly reviewing stuff he can't help me with this week. I've got defense in the bag, I think. Though I still haven't managed a patronus for the extra credit! I'm rambling, sorry. We had just gotten to studying even though everyone else was still at lunch. Then Left and Right burst in like Filch was after them.

I mean the Weasley twins, Fred and George. You've met them. You get it.

_For the record, though, please, Ms. Grimblehawk._

Okay, well, they're twins. They have a lot of fun. Get in trouble a lot. They like it when you can't tell them apart. Even when they were first years, and I tried tagging them to tell them apart, they got even. Those boys can prank. So I just think of them based on what side they're standing on. Easier than stealth tickling charms at all hours as payback for writing their names on their foreheads.

I figured they'd just set off a prank in the great hall or something. But they had on their serious faces. You learn to tell when they're _actually_ serious, and not just setting you up. "Lockhart's gone crazy!" Left said. And then Right said, "He's after Harry and McGonagall!"

You know I'm just paraphrasing, right? My memory's not good enough to tell you exactly what they said.

_Yes, we'll consider quotations as to the best of your recollection, Ms. Grimblehawk. Please continue._

Right! So Harry wasn't even supposed to be here today! He went home for the holidays. Well, to the home he's staying at. He doesn't really have a permanent address, on account of his parents being dead and his mentor trying to kill him last year. He's had it rough. Anyway, he was supposed to be at the Ministry today. He was a witness for the Wizengamot for a new law. I know! I'm off track. Sorry!

Left and Right might trick you for a prank, so I was wary. But you can usually rely on them when it's dangerous. So trust but verify. "What? Harry's here!?" I probably asked them.

"He said the Wizengamot was going to evacuate the school," Left said. Right added, "But that it was a trick from the Death Eaters, so he went to warn McGonagall." Sorry, Professor, but they just said "McGonagall." We mostly don't say " _Professor_ Soandso" unless we have to. I'm so glad you're okay! Right, sorry! "Then Lockhart attacked us all!" Left added, and Right finished, "So they sent us to get help!"

One day, I'm going to split them up. Then I'm going to see if whichever one I've got can say two sentences in a row. I bet he'll just sit there after the first sentence, wondering why the next one isn't being completed. I bet you have to line their homework up side by side to read it.

Sorry!

They'd barely gotten all that out when we heard an explosion outside, by the stairs. I ran to the portrait door to look out, and someone, probably Ron Weasley, yelled, "He might have the basilisk!" Which was dumb. There are lots of windows into the stairwell and it was lunchtime. I'm not sure the basilisk can be around in the day at all. But it certainly wouldn't be out in the sunlight!

They're kind of like vampires. Creatures powered by dark magic don't like sunlight.

So I ignored them and poked my head out. And I saw Belby, the potions professor, attacking Harry and Professor McGonagall with erumpent potions. I don't think either of you saw me? Right. So the two of them ran off, but I knew it was now _two_ bad professors. "Professor Belby's attacking them too!" I told everybody. I used his title because we also have a student who's a Belby right now and it might have been confusing!

We discussed it quickly. I can't remember who said what. But we decided that we were in a tight spot. Most of the professors went on vacation. If McGonagall was in trouble and Lockhart and Belby were bad guys, we had a problem! Flitwick was gone for the holiday. Dumbledore hadn't been around all week and Harry told me... I mean, the rumor was he got petrified, or half-petrified, or whatever. We weren't sure if anyone else was good in a fight. So, while it was clear, we sent the kids to find Hagrid.

People underestimate Hagrid! He's a hell of a shot, and not much can hurt him. If he needed to, he could probably take out anyone on staff short of Dumbledore and maybe Professor McGonagall or Flitwick.

"Why are they after us!?" I asked, at some point. The twins pointed out that Harry thought Lockhart was controlled by some magic item he was wearing. And maybe Belby was imperiused. We had a discussion about how none of us can cast the liberatus. Harry tried to show me, but since I haven't even cast the patronus yet…

One of the twins eventually said, "Belby is coming this way. And Nott's first name is 'Cantankerus?'"

Is it slander—or libel, I guess—if I accuse a Wizengamot member of something that I can't prove in a witness statement?

_Just list your suppositions. This isn't a trial._

Okay! Cantankerus Nott is a pureblood that was accused of being a Death Eater, but didn't go to Azkaban after the war. Harry's been attacked at least twice by a Death Eater with his same general build. I was there for one of them. Also he seemed very interested in staring at Harry at the Malfoy New Years' party.

I had the most awesome dress robes. And Harry cleaned up very nicely. He can dance! Why don't we ever have dances at school? The muggles do it all the–

Sorry! So I was on guard. The twins have some way of knowing who's on campus and more or less where they are. I don't want to make any further suppositions about how that could be in the present company?

_Fine._

Anyway! Belby was after us, and we knew he'd been attacking Professor McGonagall and Harry so was either bad or imperiused or whatever. And maybe Nott was just here because of the Wizengamot decision to evacuate the school, but maybe not. So we figured we shouldn't just stay put in the tower!

"Get what you can before he gets here!" I told the twins. They ran back to their room quickly, and came back with bulging pockets. I told you they did pranks? Everyone else in Gryffindor was at lunch, so we decided to head out too. Didn't want to get trapped! We weren't sure if Professor Belby could get into the tower. Because of being a professor?

We got out and were going to try to go warn everyone at lunch. But then the twins said that Lockhart was in the great hall! And everyone else seemed to be going back to their common rooms. So we guessed he had just told everyone to do it, rather than killing everyone. And probably because it would be easier to find the twins before they could tell on him! And Belby was heading back upstairs with everyone, so we couldn't just warn them.

So we went to find the other professors! They maybe couldn't win a duel against the bad professors, but, you know, adults. Long story short? Having the twins along made it hard to convince people. Everyone thought it was a prank. They really have a bad reputation. We mostly spent a few hours staying just ahead of Belby and Nott, and wondering why the kids hadn't come back with Hagrid. But the later it got, the more we worried that they would let the basilisk out. And we still couldn't find Harry, or Professor McGonagall, or Lockhart on the map.

Did I say map? I meant… like… a metaphorical map? A map is not the territory, I know! Maps! Who was talking about maps?

And, like, I can't _prove_ that Nott is the same guy as the Death Eater that was stalking around the hallways or anything, because he eventually got away. But when we went looking for Nott, we found a guy in a Death Eater robe and mask. It's all I'm saying.

You know, I don't think the bad guys were _prepared_ for kids who actually knew how to get around the school? If you knew the secret passages and had a good idea of where people were, a small resistance could probably hold the school for months against invaders. You know, like those big apes in the jungle?

_Do you mean "guerrillas?"_

Right! Gorillas! They're like big muggle demiguises. Can they turn invisible too? Or, like, the muggle camouflage equivalent? That would explain why "gorilla warfare" means using hit and run tactics. That must be _terrifying_! They can get up to more than 30 stone and are strong enough to rip your arm right out of the socket!

_That's not… nevermind. Continue, please. You were using guerrilla tactics?_

Yes! The muggle kids have been telling us about _Scooby Doo_. It's a telly show about four kids and their talking dog that solve mysteries. Usually it's a monster terrorizing a place, and it's almost always actually just another muggle pretending to be a monster to scare people away to do crimes? Harry likes comparing Hermione to one of the characters… Velvet maybe? I'm going to try to see some of it. It sounds interesting. But! Most of the episodes apparently have a whole scene where funny music is playing and the monster's chasing the kids and doors are opening and closing. See, Tonks gets it!

_If it's relevant, Auror-Apprentice Tonks will append this record with a more concise description. But I take it you were using hit-and-run tactics and using your superior numbers to keep the Death Eater from staying in pursuit of a single target?_

Exactly! And I don't think he _really_ understood that he was dealing with twins? Because they kept letting him chase one of them around a corner, and then the other one would pop out and be like, "No! I'm over here!" and he kept falling for it.

But he was firing off Unforgivables! So we had to be fast! And it was pretty terrifying. Especially when Professor Belby showed up and started throwing dangerous potions. But I felt like his heart wasn't really in it. I'm pretty sure the twins are secretly his favorites of their year. They're really good in potions class. They've been a super big help to brush up on my potions from last year for OWLs.

We kept it up for a long time. None of the three of us are great at the dangerous spells that you use in a duel when it's serious. But the Death Eater really was! And even though he may have been trying to resist the imperius, Belby was good at shielding against what we could throw. I'm glad I'm not trying to be an auror! So much respect for you two, having to fight wizards like that!

But if we're right, he's a really old man. The Death Eater, I mean, who was getting tired. Belby's not _that_ old, but he eventually used up all his potions. And the twins were running out of Zonko products and their own tricks. So we weren't sure which way it would go.

Then Harry showed up.

He'll probably say he didn't do much. That we handled it. He's really modest! And has no idea how scary he is to the bad guys!

We were fighting through the trophy room on the third floor, and the bad guys had us kind of pinned down. Then we hear, " _Libero!_ " from near the stairwell. That's the incantation for the liberatus charm. The one that frees people from the imperius that I mentioned?

_Yes. We're up to speed on that. In fact, I think we'll make that a priority for as many of you as possible to learn in my last tutoring sessions this year. It would be good for everyone to know. So Dresden cast it on Belby?_

Right! And we poked our heads out and there was Professor Belby looking all confused about how he got there. And Harry! He was wearing his nice robes (which, really, aren't that nice, I need to see about fixing that), probably because he'd been at the Wizengamot and hadn't changed. And they were scuffed up, but just enough to make him look like he'd been in a battle. So sexy. And he had his unicorn-horn focus in one hand and a silver broadsword in the other. I found out later it was the Sword of Gryffindor! And he was wearing the Sorting Hat. He looked like Godric Gryffindor come back to life. There's a sketch of him in Hogwarts: a History. I mean Godric Gryffindor, not Harry.

I kind of wish Colin—Creevey: first-year Gryffindor, photographer—had been here. Professor McGonagall, do you think it's okay if Harry holds onto the hat and the sword? Just until Colin gets back? Please!? Yay!

Well, the Death Eater takes one look at Harry, realizes Belby's not on his side anymore, and just turns and runs. Belby chases him out of the school, and Harry looked like he was going to help, but then he checked on us. And then he said we needed to make sure Professor McGonagall was okay! Even though _he_ looked like he was so exhausted he was about to fall over.

Gryffindor men, right?

_Tonks! No regular "fives" either!_

So then we went up to the Room of Requirement and dug Professor McGonagall out of the pile of junk she got knocked under by Lockhart. I'm sure she and Harry already told you about that? Great!

Do you need anything else from me? Because I have a lot of studying to do. And I think I missed dinner!

And... Harry might not have changed clothes yet.

_Fine. This concludes the interview._


	29. Hex Con 1: Simbel Minded

## Drums in the Deep

The mausoleum was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

It was _Draco's_ fault. "Why didn't that work!?" the basically-white-haired teen screamed, usual affected nonchalance impossible to muster at the moment. It was hard to be cool when the horde of mutant skeletons was now a horde of _burning_ mutant skeletons, and that wasn't slowing them down any. It _had_ been a pretty nice fire-making charm that the rich kid had freaked out and cast when the remains of the tomb-robbers started to animate.

It was _Percy's_ fault. "I think they must be surrounded by a dark magic aura that preserved their bones but not their flesh, and that keeps them from burning," my roommate observed. The lean, bespectacled redhead was trying to maintain his dignity while fast-walking out of the tomb, away from the undead creatures. They'd been totally inert until he tried to show off his ability to read demotic to his girlfriend, and wound up animating the tomb protectors.

It was _Penny's_ fault. "There has to be something else involved, though, otherwise the flames would just go out. Maybe they used an early variant of Plankhardt's Inversion to cause a fast-acting mutating cancer, and it's still somehow putting enough energy into the bodies to fuel the fire." The curly-blond-haired girl (for whom Percy had been showing off) was clearly still in researcher mode. She'd been trying to figure out why the skeletonized bodies of the cursed tomb robbers lying about had extra heads and arms. She was hurrying to keep up with the group, but it didn't seem to have sunk in yet that a horde of flaming skeletons were shambling after us. And she was the one that had talked us into slipping into the not-quite-cleared mausoleum for a little investigation.

But it wasn't _my_ fault. My name is Harry Dresden, 17-year-old legal adult wizard, basilisk-slayer, Voldemort's number one annoyance, and part-time felon, and _I wasn't even supposed to be there_. My other roommate and _my_ girlfriend were off checking out a Sudanese magical beast preserve, but I got talked into exploring the secret wizarding tombs near Abu Simbel, regardless. "Guys! Run now, research later!" I urged them, not happy about how the skeletons seemed to be picking up speed but we really _weren't_.

The tomb complex was fairly vast, the work of Ptolemy-era Egyptian wizards who'd hidden their city far from the more famous muggle areas. Nobody was quite sure why the Egyptian government decided to move the older Abu Simbel temple nearby when they flooded the original site to make a giant lake a few decades earlier. Maybe it was conspiracy, or maybe it was just good bedrock to support that kind of thing. According to Percy's brother, Bill, the local magicals had forgotten about the tombs themselves, and had a hell of a time scrambling to keep the muggles from finding the site back in the 60s.

Given that some of them had sported the remnants of modern clothing, the skeletons chasing us had probably been a mix of tomb robbers from the original era _and_ the last few decades. Everybody thought they were Indiana Jones, but most of them were Satipo.

You know: Alfred Molina's character? Dies in the beginning of _Raiders_? I had that movie on the brain since I'd insisted all my friends watch it before we went on vacation to Egypt. Which was why it was especially galling that we'd triggered a trap our first outing on our own. Reading my annoyance as we finally started running, Percy insisted, "The traps should have all been _deactivated_! Bill insisted it was safe!"

"To be fair, babe," Penny said, still not properly appreciating the tight spot we were in, "you shouldn't have read passages from _The Book of Going Forth by Night_ in front of the corpses."

"Why were there even _still corpses_!?" Draco tried to run and have a nervous breakdown at the same time. Given that he was the only one of us that played sports, he'd probably have already been to safety if he had his breathing under control. He hadn't been aware that the tarps in the corner of the tomb were covering where they'd relocated the bodies, since they hadn't gotten around to properly disposing of them yet.

The fortunate thing about being chased by a bunch of burning skeletons is that they provide plenty of light to see by, and we were easily able to keep our footing as we finally got to the slightly-collapsed entrance of this particular tomb. I brought up the rear as we stepped over fallen masonry and ducked out of the shored-up tunnel that led into the tomb. " _Engorgio!_ " Penny incanted as soon as I was clear, causing a head-sized chunk of fallen stone to swell to block the entire passageway. "See, no need to panic."

I was actually surprised that my year-mates hadn't panicked. Percy and Penny hadn't really been in any of the combat situations I seemed to find myself in around Hogwarts, where we all went to school. Despite being more than willing to help out, they tended to miss the chaos. While they were both gifted casters, I still didn't have proof they'd be an asset in a real fight. Maybe this showed they would, or maybe they just hadn't realized how serious the situation could have gotten.

A loud, boney thud resounded from the other side of the impromptu barrier and a bit of flame shot around the edges. Everyone was suddenly very still, waiting to see if Penny would immediately be proven wrong. But the boulder held, and the sounds diminished from the other side.

" _Lumos_ ," Percy cast, lighting up his wand so we could see in the low corridor that ran under the sands from tomb to tomb. It still bugged me that my wand-reliant friends could either cast spells _or_ have a flashlight. I needed to get them better foci for the light charm. Or actual flashlights. "As I was saying, Bill was sure it was safe. Those bodies _were_ primed to reanimate, but only as part of an enchantment placed on the sarcophagus itself. Which the curse breakers removed!"

"Congratulations!" Draco sneered, sitting on the floor with his legs pulled against his chest, trying not to hyperventilate. "You found an ancient curse even Gringotts curse breakers missed. Better write to McGonagall to have that count towards being Head Boy." Being sarcastic seemed to make the kid feel better in almost any circumstance.

"I already passed on that," Percy shrugged.

"Wait, what?" I asked him. Being the school's Head Boy (as hilarious as I thought the title sounded) had been one of Percy's dreams.

"They gave Head Girl to Gemma Farley instead of Penny," he explained. "Which I have no doubt she earned," he nodded to Draco—Gemma Farley was the Slytherin girls' prefect in our year and presumably a friend of Draco's, since that was his house. "But I realized that it would be a lot of responsibility and time, not even spent with Penny. I have too much study for NEWTs to do, and our research project. The position is helpful for the general Ministry bureaucracy, but not for the Department of Mysteries."

"That's really smart, man," I told him. He'd come a long way from the status-obsessed kid I'd first met two years earlier. "Who'd they pick instead?"

"Flinton, I think," he answered. The Hufflepuff boys' prefect seemed like a good choice.

Penny had clearly already known about this, but squeezed Percy's shoulder anyway for making such a mature decision. She said, though, "That digression aside, I guess a recitation shouldn't have had _that_ much effect if it wasn't keyed into the tomb wards. Now that I think about it, a password-activated animation effect would have been really hard to miss. So why did they suddenly stand up and attack us?"

"They may have only _attacked_ us because _someone_ set them on fire," I glared at Draco. Obviously it was slightly hypocritical because I might have blasted them by reflex _myself_ if I'd been a few seconds faster than Draco. But this time it _wasn't_ my fault, and I was going to hang onto that fact. "As for why they animated, I wonder if it was coincidental…" I trailed off, realizing that my subconscious had been trying to raise a flag about something I'd half-noticed for a few minutes now. "Does anyone else hear drumming?"

I stopped talking, and everyone shut up. My hearing is generally uncannily good, but, once I pointed it out, I could see that the others began to realize that the only sound in the underground necropolis other than our breathing was far too rhythmic to be the natural sounds of wind and earth. I did a quick bit of math and realized that it was probably a little after sunset outside. We'd been too engrossed to clear out when the rest of the Gringotts teams and their guests started leaving for dinner, and this close to the Equator sunset was only around 6:30 even at the end of July.

"Have they ever spent the night in these tombs before?" I asked. Everyone else gave a big shrug. "Maybe we should go ahead and leave?"

Even with magic, the ancient wizarding Egyptians hadn't believed in wasting any more effort digging underground passages than their muggle contemporaries. The corridor was low enough I had to duck under the recently-installed wooden support beams as we walked, and Percy ducked his own head just so his untameable carrot top wouldn't brush against them. While he wasn't anywhere near my freakish height, Percy had gotten the last of his growth spurts around the time he turned 17, and most of the Weasley boys were tall.

Draco had only just turned 13 a couple of months earlier, so might have to worry about being too tall someday but not yet. And he already had Penny beaten for height, so she was pulling ahead of the group, completely unconcerned due to having over a foot of clearance over her petite frame. Sometimes being small was an advantage. Not having to duck every few feet meant she had time to get her thoughts in order, so asked, "If this _is_ drumming, and it's related… that's American necromantic traditions, right?"

Percy answered, "Yes, though possibly by way of Africa: syncretism between various native traditions that grew to prominence around the Caribbean. I believe it is supposed to require less effort and time than the British style. An inferius is essentially a dark magic item, with all the enchanting work that entails. Drumming necromancy requires significantly less preparation, but relies on the drumbeat to represent the beating of the heart. Stop the drummer, stop the undead. Or, at least, remove the necromancer's control, which often ends the animation."

"Good to know," I told them, grimacing, "Because I think we're heading _toward_ it."

The passage finally emptied into a much larger room, which served as entryway and embalming chamber for the various connected crypts. It was the only way out of the complex, up to the Gringotts encampment where we were spending most of our vacation. Beautiful frescoes covered the walls, and had held up better than their muggle equivalents due to preservative magic. The excavation teams had placed cool-burning bluebell flames in glass jars throughout the room, providing plenty of light, albeit with a bluish tinge.

And, sure enough, standing in the middle of the room, atop a stone bier used for embalming, between us and the doorway, was the drummer. A slender, androgynous figure that I assumed was female from the knockoff Cleopatra robes and headdress alternated using her hand and the end of a black, lacquered wand to strike the head of a simple wood-and-skin drum slung across her chest with a leather strap.

If she weren't the drummer, I would have assumed she was one of the things it was animating, because her skin was a near-translucent, pallid gray and her eyes were milky with cataracts. She saw us as soon as we exited the corridor, and her deathly-blue lips turned up in a smirk—humor that didn't reach those dead eyes.

"Early party guests!" she said, voice cultured but extremely gritty like a heavy smoker, and glimpses of yellow teeth didn't bely that impression. "Don't worry, the others should be along shortly. Then we'll all go out and make more friends on the surface. Oh, but where are my manners, new friends? Pleased to meet you…

"You can call me Mavra."

## Black and White

"I think she's a _vampire_ ," Penny whispered, wand at the ready.

"She _is_ , and her hearing is very good," Mavra chuckled, in a voice that was as dry and dusty as the tomb we were in. She still perched a yard above the stone floor, standing on a stone bier that had been used to embalm the denizens of the mausoleum complex.

"Black court," Draco added, surprisingly. He hadn't even done his third-year defense work, which was mostly about creatures, but maybe he'd been reading ahead.

The vampire didn't deny it, and I wracked my brain for what I knew from my own OWL studies. The Hogwarts curriculum didn't go that deeply into vampires beyond pointing out that there was a different type native to the Americas that functioned differently than those more common to Europe. The locals were pretty similar to the ones in _Dracula_ , while the American ones were more like demon bats in human suits?

Magical creatures are weird.

They were supposed to be hideously powerful, especially as they got older, though they had the classic weaknesses to sunlight, garlic, holy symbols, and the like. But they were technically classed and legally protected as _beings_ : if they were willing to follow the laws of wizards when interacting with them, the Ministry and the International Confederation of Wizards didn't really care if they were devouring muggles by the busload. Which meant we weren't supposed to light them on fire preemptively, even if they were being super creepy.

Percy had apparently come to the same conclusion, and tried to be diplomatic, "We appreciate the offer of friendship, madam. But I think we will soon be missed by our fellows and would prefer to go ahead and demonstrate that we are all okay."

"So polite," Mavra told him, still drumming. "For that, you, your lover, and the Malvora-castoff can go. Dresden, however, has an engraved invitation that it wouldn't be polite to decline."

I groaned and said, "Let me guess, that invitation came with a snake and skull on it?" I'd known there were rumors that Voldemort had made allies among the dark creatures throughout Europe. Maybe I'd gotten complacent that he'd just be sending Death Eaters after me.

Mavra just nodded, still drumming calmly. She cocked an ear expectantly, and I, also, soon picked up sounds of desiccated feet shuffling up the several corridors that emptied into this room. The other bodies in the complex must have had to dig themselves out rather than being laid out under a tarp.

"You'd deny me my protector?" Draco asked, curiously. He bargained, "The house of Malfoy has a use for Harry Dresden still, and would be willing to negotiate an end to hostilities."

While I wasn't really pleased that he was treating me like a business interest, I hoped that Draco was just trying to stick up for me. Mavra just shook her head however, and explained, "I care little for the concerns of the White Court in the best of times, and even less for the machinations of their cadet branches. But, again, your politeness does you credit. Best take my offer to leave while you can. The party is about to begin." Hopefully I'd have time to work out what she meant about a White Court later.

"I knew being in that picture was a bad idea," I muttered. The Weasley family had won a Ministry prize draw that was funding their extended Egyptian vacation, and it was apparently newsworthy. I mostly suspected that the Malfoys had engineered it to make sure _Draco_ had a good vacation without his hosts feeling like they were taking charity from a man they hated. Regardless, the nine-person family and several of their close friends who were also on this trip crowded into a spread for the cover of the Daily Prophet. It must have been a slow news day.

Maybe I should have argued harder about not being in the photo. I was paying for _my own_ trip with book money, which I already felt guilty enough about taking since I'd just cleaned up Severus Snape's potions notes from an old book I'd found that had belonged to the dead potions prodigy. Would this just be the first of bad guys who would figure out where I was and make a play for whatever bounty the Death Eaters had set on my head?

"You guys get out," I told them. Hopefully the, "And get help," was implicit.

"No," Percy said, simply. "I have failed to have your back too many times already." Damn, why did my friend have to prove _right now_ that he wasn't just in Gryffindor as a legacy?

Penny had looked torn about leaving me, but she definitely wasn't going to leave me _and_ her boyfriend. "Professor Lupin _better_ give me extra credit for this," she whispered to console herself, moving further into a dueling stance.

Draco looked at both of them like they were mad, gave me a seriously apologetic shrug, and said, "Well, good luck to the three of you. Madam Mavra?" She smirked that evil smirk and gestured, so Draco strode quickly past her and toward the exit. He did keep his head turned, so he could watch her out of his peripheral vision.

Maybe he'd just hoped for her to try to hex him in the back because that would give us a chance to attack her? That would be the most charitable assumption.

But the kid got safely into the stairway that led up to the surface, and we were running out of time to wait. I could clearly hear the shuffling almost to us from the other corridors, though we'd at least delayed the attack from the one we'd come from. I vaguely worried that I didn't have my staff, mostly because it was hell to maneuver in the low-ceilinged corridors, but I drew my blasting rod and shook my shield bracelet out from under my sleeve. Percy moved to my right and drew his wand, with Penny slightly back and more protected between us.

"Last chance to call this off, ma'am," I suggested, playing toward her enjoyment of politeness for all the good it would do me.

"No, I think not," she said, and then stepped back off the embalming bier, placing its solid stone basalt bulk in between her and us, dropping prone so we could only locate her by the drumming. Mummies began to stagger from the corridor opposite us, quickly orienting on the only living beings in the room.

" _Reducto!_ " I shouted, hoping that the Gringotts teams would accept a horde of mummies as a good reason to damage the architecture. Sadly, my spell barely affected the lintel of the hallway that was spewing undead, resisted by ancient protections in the stone. A few chips of limestone shattered free, but did little more than annoy the undead.

" _Aguamenti!_ " Percy tried moments before Penny's, " _Glacius!_ " Sadly, the attempt to combo summoning and then freezing water was thwarted by the dry air. The water-making spell needed water vapor in the air to catalyze its conjuration, in concordance with Gamp's laws, and so all Percy got was a Super Soaker rather than a firehose. The lead mummy was encased in a thin layer of ice that it quickly began to escape from, and the few behind just started to go around.

"They're not all going to be fireproof!" I suggested, still hanging onto fiendfyre as my last ditch "wizards' curse." I wasn't keen to use it, since it would likely kill me and my friends as well, but if all hope was lost anyway… but for the time being, I tried, " _Confringo!_ " and launched my girlfriend's uncle's favorite spell at one of the approaching mummies. The torrent of explosive fire had the intended effect, causing the animated dead man to catch fire and explode, shattering the ice off of his neighbor and staggering all the nearby mummies.

Fortunately, Percy was watching our flank, because I heard him yell, " _Protego!_ " at the same time as Mavra nonverbally launched some kind of curse from the cover of the stone bier. Percy's hasty shield barely knocked it out of the air, but wavered as if it had packed a hell of a punch. The vampire had switched to entirely drumming with her left hand while she was using her ebon wand as a focus instead of a drumstick. "Switch!" Percy suggested.

I went low as Percy and Penny started hurling fire-making charms at the remaining mummies, getting my own shield up to intercept a couple more unspecified curses. They hit hard, but my shield was holding. I didn't recognize them exactly from her wand gestures and the colors, but they reminded me of some of the darker spells that the aurors had warned us about in our tutoring sessions. Yet, somehow, more raw, as if Mavra had studied their precursors from centuries past.

I wondered why she hadn't resorted to Unforgivables. I'd later discuss with my spiritual research assistant and evolve the theory that the darkest curses technically require the caster to have a soul, no matter how shredded, because Hell has no interest in providing power to those that it will never capture. But at the time, I was really worried that if she launched a killing curse, even if I could dodge, it might hit my friends behind me. So I was powerfully incentivized to bring the fight to her.

Trusting that the two combat-untested prefects would be able to handle flammable mummies that had no ranged attacks, I charged the vampiress. Several large strides carried me across the room. " _Confringo! Incendio! Bombarda!_ " I cast as I ran. Mavra easily dodged the blasting curse that went over her head, did that annoying point-defense deflection to my fire-making charm that advanced wand duelists were so good at, and put up a full shield to keep my exploding charm from taking out her cover. But hopefully she wasn't prepared for me to then shout, " _Lumos solem!_ " as I rounded the bier.

The bright, sunlight-adjacent variation of the light charm hadn't done much to the basilisk, but I hoped vampires were more vulnerable. Brilliant blue-tinted light streamed from my mother's amulet on my chest, and the vampire shrieked as I caught her full in the blast. Transparent shields weren't much help against light.

It didn't last long. " _Finite incantatem_ ," she hissed, and my light went out. I'd been just as blinded by the light as she was, so I didn't realize that she'd moved forward rather than back. As the light winked out, I realized she'd dispelled it from inches away. Faster than I could hope to block, she backhanded me with her wand hand, never ceasing drumming with the other, even as mummies began to spill from the other corridors, surrounding us.

The blow to my head felt like a baseball bat wrapped in old leather. I suspected, later, that she hadn't even hit me as hard as she could have, for fear of snapping her own wand in the impact. I went down hard (fortunately onto the left side that _wasn't_ usually taking punishment from hitting the ground in fights).

Looming above me, shaking the stars out of my eyes, I saw that her pallid visage was now crispy like burned meat, and the look of smug amusement in her eyes had been replaced with barely-controlled rage.

"By my own hand, then, wizard," she growled, baring yellow teeth and diving at me faster than I could track.

## Holy Wars

The vampire was diving at me with hideous speed while my friends tried to hold off an ever-growing army of reanimated mummies when suddenly there was a shout of, "In the name of the Lord, avaunt!" followed by a flare of golden light. Mavra immediately aborted her attack at my prone form and focused her wand at the new arrival, even missing a beat at her drumming and causing the undead to stumble.

I looked toward the source of the shout and saw a burly white guy with short brown hair and a trimmed, dark beard standing amid chunks of hacked-up mummy coming out of the corridor closest to the exit. He was wearing jeans and a simple flannel shirt with a toolbelt, and I thought I'd seen him around over the last few days helping to install the wooden support beams in the corridors.

Also, he wielded a longsword that was possibly bigger than he was—and he wasn't a short man—emitting the golden glow. So that was unusual.

"You!" Mavra screeched, even angrier at the sword-wielding craftsman than she'd been at me for burning her. Wait, dark hair, beard, carpenter… I briefly entertained the idea that she'd accidentally reanimated Jesus with her necromantic drumming. But that would be silly. As silly as a caretaker showing up at just the right moment to save me with a giant sword? I was withholding judgement. Mavra starting firing curses at the guy, and he just batted them out of the air with the sword.

The man simply strode across the chamber toward her, deflecting spells and calling, "Blood of the Dragon, that old serpent, I cast you _out_!"

I finally got my legs moving and drunkenly stumbled up and away from the distracted vampire. Some mummies were emerging from the corridor we'd started in, so I shot a gout of flame at them while Percy and Penny tried to cover the horde coming out of the other areas. They were really stepping up, though their situational awareness wasn't great. Hopefully all the fire wasn't going to start affecting our ability to breathe soon.

As the handyman-warrior got into melee range with Mavra, she started moving around. The vampire moved so quickly that she almost seemed to be apparating, but I knew she wasn't. The anti-apparition wards the Gringotts teams had set up to prevent antiques from teleporting off were still keeping us from taking the easy way out of the building. Instead, she was basically moving like the Flash, a blur of robes and a dopplering of drumming sounds.

Yet, despite this speed advantage, the swordsman was moving unerringly. His blade swings caught her spells and forced her to dodge, even though he was only at human speeds. Realizing she was distracted and this was my best shot, I lined up my blasting rod, anticipated where she was getting herded, and yelled, " _Reducto!_ "

She still nearly dodged it, but I'd configured my object-shattering curse for high speed, low power. It just needed to do one thing: shatter the drum. It caught an edge under her elbow, and that was enough. The musical instrument broke into several pieces, pulling the skin in half as she made one last attempt at a downbeat.

The remaining mummies staggered, confused, for a few moments, and then began to collapse. Good. I'd remembered at the last second Percy's mention that _some_ research suggested stopping the drummer merely freed the undead to do whatever they wanted. I didn't know if that was a different ritual, or she just hadn't built up enough power in them yet.

Blowing up her drum also wrong-footed Mavra, and she was barely able to drop and roll to avoid being decapitated by the glowing sword. As it was, it cut the top off of her headdress, exposing matted, stringy hair to the light of the room. Tumbling back, glancing around, and realizing she was now significantly outnumbered, she clearly decided to leave.

Three wizards oriented to blast her and there was just a streak of colors sprinting out the exit, three curses going her way and not quite landing. She didn't even have time for any repartee.

Rude.

There was a tense standoff as we all warily regarded each other and the collapsed bodies, many of them smouldering. Penny was the first to break the tension. "Well, that's a big mess." She lowered her wand and asked, "Mr. Carpenter, right?"

The big man (whose name was hopefully an on-the-nose cover identity like that of my werewolf friend "Remus Lupin") nodded and stepped back, the glow fading from the sword. I could see that he was perhaps in his forties, older but still clearly athletic. I wouldn't have looked twice at him in any industrial district or construction project in the Western world. Penny had probably talked to him in passing because he reminded her of her father. Honestly, he had a pretty dad-ish vibe in general.

I lowered my blasting rod and Percy followed with his wand, and I quipped, "How'd you get that sword in here? Magic hat?" In my experience, wizard hats were the preferred method of moving big swords quietly.

"In my bag with the shovels and prybars," he chuckled, his accent indefinably middle American. "Glad I didn't have to make due with hammers and framing squares."

"Are you a focus caster, like Harry?" Percy asked, nodding at my blasting rod compared to his and Penny's wands. To be fair, it wasn't much of a leap, given that I'd been running around casting with a broadsword a few weeks earlier.

"Not exactly," he said, again with a wry grin, though I thought there was some wariness in his eyes. "I go where I'm needed, though. I was surprised to get an invitation to work on the other side of the world at a magical dig site, but now I know why." Seeing that he had our curiosity, he explained, "That vampire is an old enemy."

My wariness was growing at his talk of invitations, and I asked, overly calmly, "You're not a rival assassin then? Or… wait… did someone pay you to watch my back?"

"She was after you in particular, then?" he asked. "No. While I'm sure you're a fine young man, I usually don't get called in to save a single life. I suspect once she'd killed you, she planned to unleash that horde on the campsite above and then use _those_ bodies to terrorize the nearby human city. Or, at the very least, she'd then have plenty of time to find dark artifacts in these tombs that she absolutely shouldn't take possession of."

"Some kind of MACUSA counter-terrorism force, then?" Penny asked. She'd been hyperaware of terrorist groups since her father was injured in an IRA bombing the previous year, plus all the Death Eater attacks on myself and the school.

"Kind of. Not the wizarding government, though. I answer to a higher power. But, effectively, yes, a lot of the time I find myself in between innocents and forces that would unleash terror upon them." I felt like there was a faint stress on "higher power," but I didn't feel great about pursuing it since he was giving up more information than he probably had to. He just might give me an answer.

"Not unlike Harry," Percy grinned.

"You weren't so bad yourself, Perce," I told him, looking around the room. "You too, Penny. I didn't know you'd both been doing combat drills together."

"It seemed prudent," my roommate shrugged. "Neither of us has your raw power, but we are more likely to be attacked together, so coordination gives us an advantage."

Mr. Carpenter's face looked sad, and off my quirked eyebrow he said, "I hate to see kids having to deal with this kind of thing so early. Just thinking about my own children getting involved at _all_ , much less as teenagers…"

Penny clearly wanted to ask him about his kids, but we were interrupted as the whole curse breaker squad came pouring down the stairs, along with most of our adult chaperones. Wands out, they probably weren't prepared to see us casually talking in the middle of the room, surrounded by a defeated undead horde.

"Alright, folks?" the lead redhead asked. While it was hard to think of most people as truly tall, given my own freakish height, Bill was, so far, the tallest of the Weasleys (though I thought Ron might give him a run for his money as he finished growing). He was the one who actually worked here, that the vacation was based around getting to see. Long hair pulled into a ponytail and a pierced ear that Mrs. Weasley had already complained to all of us about, he gave off a vibe of being competent and dangerous, only mitigated by my introduction to him amid getting smothered by his mom and baby sister.

Also, Mad-Eye Moody had been right. Bill _did_ look more like the paranoid auror than his own father. Wizarding genetics were weird.

"The vampire escaped, and Harry took a hit to the head, but I think otherwise fine," Percy summarized.

"We barely saw her passing and put up guards and wards," Bill acknowledged. "That's what kept us. Glad you had some help… Mr. Carpenter, right?" he asked, wary of the giant and seemingly-ancient longsword that our new friend had point-down but not stowed.

" _Michael_ Carpenter?" shouted a voice from the throng of wizards, and Percy's second-oldest brother stepped forward, aghast. Charlie was the one Weasley boy that seemed to most take after his mother, short and stocky. The lack of height had apparently served him well as Quidditch seeker, but he'd bulked up working at a dragon preserve in Romania the last couple of years. He kept his own red hair very short, one might even say _singed_ , and his complexion already showed a few burn scars that not even magic could completely heal. "It _is_ you. I've seen the pictures! This asshole is a dragon poacher!"

"You have the story wrong," Michael said calmly but with a hint of danger.

"You're saying you _didn't_ kill Siriothrax seven years ago?" Charlie insisted. "He was probably the oldest living dragon in Europe! How much did you get selling his parts!?"

"Nothing. He was possessed by a dark entity and had been kidnapping mortals to devour." Michael could have ended his statement there, but went on, "But I guess wizards generally care little for the depredations of monsters as long as they aren't killing _your_ kind?"

The longsword may have lifted a little more off the floor, not quite into a combat stance but ready to get there. Wands of the incoming posse weren't exactly being lowered. Fortunately, _Mr._ Weasley moved forward and laid one hand on Charlie's wand arm and one on Bill's shoulder. "It sounds like Mr. Carpenter felt he had a good reason, and I take it he was very helpful in driving off that vampire?" Penny, Percy, and I nodded. "Then perhaps we can worry about this over tea rather than wands?"

With his father crimping his righteous dragon-handler anger (likely secondhand, since he must have been like _twelve_ when it happened), Charlie grudgingly stowed his wand, everyone else soon followed suit, and Michael moved his immense sword to a relaxed stance and suggested he need to go get the sheath where he'd left it up the corridor.

As he was walking off, and everyone was calming down about the unexpected swordsman, the Gringotts-employed curse breakers and archaeologists in the group finally realized that they were looking at the undifferentiated, mostly-burned bodies of dozens of historical mummies and the spell-damaged walls of the ancient tomb. They started making very sad noises.

"Sorry?" I shrugged. "We really _did_ try to just stop the drumming. But… vampire."

## Flown Felon

"Vampires now, Harry!?" yelled the reddish-brown-haired witch who tackle-hugged me the moment I stepped back up to the surface. A couple-dozen folks that were apparently prevented from going running into a potential vampire/zombie outbreak were waiting anxiously around the entryway down to the tomb complex.

"Just crossing off the whole defense against the dark arts curriculum one at a time to get that NEWT review in," I joked to my girlfriend. "Seriously, I'm fine. Just a bump on the head. How was the creature preserve? See any nundu? Nundus? Nundi?" I wasn't sure about the plural.

"No, but they had streelers and erumpents! We got you some potion ingredients. It was lucky, since they'd been sold out until recently but they got a fresh batch!" That was great. I'd been wishing I'd had more erumpent potion on hand when I found myself without my blasting rod and facing down two Voldemorts, a Death Eater, and a basilisk. "But don't change the subject! Why does this always happen to you?"

"This time? I shouldn't have been in that picture for the paper. Bounty hunters know where I am," I explained.

"A good point," said Mr. Longbottom, the balding auror, who'd been listening from a few feet away. "Perhaps we should go ahead and move to the second leg of our vacation."

"I don't want to make everyone leave…" I demurred.

"Nonsense," he said. "While I'm sure the Weasleys have been happy to spend time with Bill, a week at a campsite in the desert is more than enough for me. And, I'm sure, especially for those that don't consider it a holiday to try to translate hieroglyphics."

"Cairo, next?" Mathilda grinned. My girlfriend was very smart, but had almost zero interest in runes and magical theory. "They have shopping! And restaurants!"

"You just left him there!" I heard yelling, and looked over to see Ron Weasley and Neville Longbottom accosting Draco. The two didn't have their whole posse, since Seamus Finnegan hadn't been able to afford the trip and Hermione Granger wasn't going to meet us until later. Her family had already planned to go to France for part of the summer. But Draco hadn't brought _any_ of his normal backup.

"And I'm going to do more than just be in the way?" Draco spat back, not giving ground. "Maybe you two think you would have stayed and _helped_? Or would you just have been a liability? And nobody up here would have known anything because bloody Gryffindors all think they have to fight every battle!"

It wasn't entirely a fair assessment, since Ron and Neville were extremely competent in a fight for 13-year-olds. They'd had to be. Neither had been in nearly as many scrapes as I had, but they'd each been in at least three life-or-death battles I could think of off the top of my head. And, ever since they realized Voldemort was a threat, they'd been taking their training very seriously.

Of course, Draco was also probably getting a lot of the same training I had from my godmother, his aunt. Not that I'd recommend the Bellatrix Lestrange course in magical combat to _anyone_. This had been the first time I'd seen him in any kind of real fight, and he'd at least attacked rather than fleeing when he first saw the skeletons coming at us.

Though he was holding his own, I moved over, arm still wrapped around Mathilda, who didn't seem inclined to let me wander off any time soon. "It's okay, guys," I told them. "I would have told Draco to go. I tried to get Penny and Percy to take off, too."

Mathilda jammed a knuckle in my rib, making me wince, and growled, "Did they _help_? Would you have died if they hadn't stayed?" I thought about objecting, then shrugged. Having them watching my back had let me focus on Mavra, for all the good that did. Without them, I _might_ have gotten overwhelmed before Michael showed up. "Then stop it. We get to decide if we have your back or not." Draco's face fell a little, so she added, "But it's also fine if having your back means getting more help!"

Speaking of Michael, he was leaving the tomb with an oversized duffle bag hung over his shoulder and a toolbox in his hand. It probably really _was_ an effective way to get around with a giant sword. Maybe I should consider something similar for my staff? Ginny Weasley, Luna Lovegood, and little Julia Longbottom, late to the commotion, wandered up, but Luna only had eyes for the sword-wielding carpenter, "Who is _that_?" the little blond seer asked.

"Some kind of American battle mage, I think," I told her. "He has a giant sword that he fought off the vampire with. Says he solves dark magic problems."

"I don't think he's a wizard," she shook her head. "I've never seen anyone like him before. It's like the golden ribbons at school…" Luna had seemed to see it when our school's fortune magic wards bent probability to make sure the students and teachers wouldn't get killed while on campus. "...only he's tied to the whole _world_. Or at least as far as I can see. They're pulling him north."

"Huh," I said. "It's kind of exhausting getting manipulated into being in the right place to save someone just at Hogwarts. Must be tiring if he's doing that for all of planet Earth. I guess he _did_ say something about being surprised about an invitation to come out here. Maybe he meant it was fate intervening rather than someone in particular hiring him."

"Maybe not fate. Maybe not exactly," Luna said mysteriously, then added, "I'll figure it out."

"Cor," Ron breathed. I didn't think he'd really bought into Luna's gifts until just then, but he suddenly realized, "Luna, think you can help me with my divination homework this year?" He saw my eyes widen as I was about to object, then insisted, "I'm taking muggle studies and care of magical creatures, too! I know it's wooly, but three extracurriculars look better than two, and I'm not going to make it in the brainy ones like the rest of you!"

Neville and Draco looked like they were about to call him on not taking arithmancy or runes, but then shrugged in agreement. Luna simply smiled, "I'll see what I can do, Ronald. I don't really know much about the formal tools. I'm excited to find out next year, though."

"So did I hear we're going to Cairo?" Ginny asked. The youngest Weasley had been enjoying spending time with her two eldest brothers, but seemed to have exhausted her interests in the camp's limited amenities. Especially since nobody would let her play adventurer all by herself in the tombs at her age. "Because Oliver said they're supposed to have an indoor quidditch pitch and camp, and maybe we can rent the same kind of broom and have a real race, Draco?"

As everyone was surprised that the aloof Slytherin shrugged and nodded his assent to his rival seeker, I asked Mathilda, "Where _is_ Oliver, anyway? Didn't he come back with you from the preserve?" I hadn't seen my other roommate loitering about.

"He and Lexi went straight to the tent," my girlfriend explained. And she looked over and noticed all of the adult chaperones having an animated conversation, probably about what had just happened and moving on. "And, you know… You got a bump on the head? I should help you take care of that! In private."

"Wouldn't want it to get infected or anything," I grinned, and the two of us waved goodbye to the younger kids and sneaked off.

To be fair, I noticed that Percy and Penny had made themselves scarce, too. Something about the adrenaline spike of a life-or-death battle…

We actually had a whole hour to ourselves in one of the palatial rooms of the wizard-spaced tent Draco had provided for our group. _Technically_ , the girls were in one tent and this one was just Oliver, Percy, Draco, and me. But the kid was an excellent landlord, and, well, the chaperones weren't paying _that_ much attention.

"Put your shirts on," the Slytherin in question drawled from the main room of the tent. "More problems."

Six older teenagers spilled out, clothing in various levels of disarray, and I asked Draco, "What's up."

"It's a good thing we're moving, because I've just had a letter from my father," he waved the parchment in question, Lucius Malfoy's handwriting visible. "It seems someone else saw the picture in the paper.

"My cousin, Sirius Black, has escaped from Azkaban."

**Author's Note:**

> This fiction is crossposted per request of a fan who would rather read it here. I've combined the shorter original chapters into larger thematic collections here. My intention is to post roughly weekly until this is caught up to the original location, at which point posting here will likely slow down to every other week or so to match the original posting cadence.


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